First to Fly - Softcover

James Tobin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0719557380 ISBN 13: 9780719557385

Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd, 2003

Synopsis

This is the story of how the obscure but brilliant and determined Wilbur Wright, and his brother Orville, beat rich, powerful and sometimes unscrupulous rivals to become the first to fly. At the turn of the 20th century, as Wilbur Wright himself said, men by common consent adopted flight as the standard of impossibility. Intense, brilliant, determined, Wilbur and his brother Orville seized that challenge for their own. They were obscure bicycle makers from Ohio who went to a deserted Atlantic beach to devise the world's first aeroplane, and they faced keen competition from far more prominent men, equally driven to make history. First came Samuel Langley, head of the Smithsonian Institution, the odds-on favourite to fly first. Under intense public scrutiny, his ponderous aerodrome dropped into the icy Potomac River like a handful of mortar just nine days before the Wrights' unheralded first flight at Kitty Hawk. Yet the Wrights were so obscure they were all but ignored. So for six years they fought for recognition - flying a full circle before the disbelieving French, competing against Alexander Graham Bell, and finally against the motorcyclist Glenn Curtiss, fastest man in the world. In the final showdown with Curtiss in 1909, Wilbur Wright circled Manhattan above a million ecstatic spectators. The brothers' place in history was assured. Using his research in the rich archives of aviation, James Tobin pulls readers back to a time when flight seemed simultaneously crazy and tantalizing, drawing them along the Wrights' twisting path of trial, error and breakthrough. No one, Orville later remarked to Charles Lindbergh, quite understands the spirit of those times.

About this title

About the Author:

James Tobin won prestigious awards in the USA both for his last book, 'Ernie Pyle's War' and for this book as work in prgress. He holds a Ph.D in history and has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in journalism.

Review:

'James Tobin's book...is a fluent and able retelling of the key events from 1900, when the Wrights began their experiments with large gliders, to 1909, the apotheosis of their achievement, when Wilbur flew a Wright byplane around the Statue of Liberty...James Tobin's entertaining, well-researched book is a timely spur to rouse us from our aeronautical complacency' -- William Boyd, Times Literary Supplement 20030529 'Tobin's extraordinary book puts [the Wright brothers] into humane perspective. Not only is it endlessly readable, it also offers a convincing narrative of a scientific work in progress' -- Brian Morton, Sunday Herald 20030518 'Extraordinarily well-written and deeply nuanced work is the best of the recent spate of books celebrating the Wright Brothers' -- Publishers Weekly 20030217 'James Tobin gives an exhaustive and exhausting account of the two brothers and the sage of man's first flight' -- Gay Byrne, Irish Independent 20030601

About this edition

• Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0719557380
• ISBN 13: 9780719557385
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1