While this book is a partial biography of Wilbur and Orville Wright, it’s not comprehensive, as it focuses only on their aviation pursuits. The Epilogue briefly reports what happened in the rest of their lives. The last chapter covers Orville’s return to Fort Myer and his successful public flights, Wilbur’s historic first flights around New York City, and the speed with which aviation grew in 1910 alone. Chapter 10 describes the time that all three siblings spent in France in 1909, during which Wilbur continued his public demonstrations and they all became celebrities.

The US trial ended in a serious accident, after which Orville’s sister, Katharine, helped him through a long recuperation. Chapter 8 details Wilbur’s public demonstrations in Le Mans, France, while the next chapter describes Orville’s trials for the US War Department at Fort Myer, near Washington, DC. The final chapters cover the brothers’ successful demonstrations in the US and Europe in 19, which proved their accomplishment and brought them fame and fortune. The latter endeavor led to Wilbur’s journey to France and Germany for business negotiations, which is the focus of Chapter 7. The next chapter describes further test flights as they perfected their plane, this time at a pasture called Huffman Prairie outside their hometown of Dayton, Ohio-and their first attempts to interest governments in buying it. After testing their Flyer in 1902, they left Kitty Hawk confident that they’d solved the problem of flight.Ĭhapter 5 covers the first successful powered flight, as the brothers added a motor and propellers to their Flyer and tested it again at Kitty Hawk. This required recalculating from scratch the necessary wing curvature, as the accepted figures from earlier aviation pioneers didn’t work. The next chapter describes how Wilbur and Orville made and tested an updated version of their Flyer. It describes the brothers’ living conditions at the rudimentary camp they set up and explains the steps they took to test their plane and improve its design-including closely observing the area’s many seabirds. The third chapter covers test flights at Kitty Hawk during 19. Chapter 2 starts in 1896, the year the flying bug really bit the brothers, and continues through mid-1900, when they prepared to test a glider at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The author also describes the adult Wilbur and Orville, comparing them based on a photograph in the frontispiece and expanding on this to include their personalities. The first chapter describes the work and family life of the parents, Bishop Milton Wright and Susan Wright, before delving into the childhoods of Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine.

The book begins with the Wright family’s background.

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough