The Wright Brothers [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]

McCullough, David

Published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 2015

Used Hardcover

From Vero Beach Books, Vero Beach, FL, U.S.A. Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars

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As new condition white boards, blue spine, and silver spine lettering contained in a fine condition non price-clipped photographic dust jacket. Includes List of Other Books by David McCullough; Author Dedication; Preliminary Page Quote; Prologue; Epilogue; Acknowledgments; Source Notes; Bibliography; Illustration Credits; and Index. Illustrated with three section of black-and-white photographic plates, a black-and-white photographic frontispiece; and black-and-white photographic front and rear endpapers. "Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize David McCullough tells the dramatic story of the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly. On a winter day in 1903, on the remote Outer Banks of North Carolina, two unknown brothers from Ohio, Wilbur and Orville Wright, changed history. The age of flight had begun with the first heavier-than-air powered machine carrying a pilot. Far more than a couple of Dayton bicycle mechanics who happened to hit on success, the Wright brothers were men of exceptional ability, unyielding deetermination, and far-ranging intellectual interest and curiosity, much of which they attributed to their upbringing. They grew up without electricity or indoor plumbing, but with books aplenty, supplied mainly by their preacher father. And they never stopped learning. Nor did their high-spirited, devoted sister, Katharine, who played a far more important role in their endeavors than has been generally understood. When the brothers worked together, no problem seemed insurmountable. Wilbur, the older of the two, was unquestionably a genius. Orville had such mechanical ingenuity as few people had ever seen. Nothing stopped them in their "mission," not failures, not ridicule, not even the reality that every time they took off in one of their experimental contrivances, they stood a good chance of being killed. In this thrilling book master historian David McCullough draws on the immense riches of the Wright Papers, including personal diaries, notebooks, and more than a thousand letters from private family correspondence, to tell the human side of a profoundly American story." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: David McCullough has twice received the Pulitzer Prize, for Truman and John Adams, and twice received the National Book Award, for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback. His other acclaimed books are 1776, Brave Companions, The Johnstown Flood, The Great Bridge, and The Greater Journey. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. Seller Inventory # 007515

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Bibliographic Details

Title: The Wright Brothers [FIRST EDITION, FIRST ...
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, New York
Publication Date: 2015
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: As New
Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
Edition: 1st Edition

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To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and The Great Race for Flight [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]

Tobin, James

Published by Free Press , an imprint of Simon & Schuster, New York, 2003

Used Hardcover First Edition

Seller: Vero Beach Books, Vero Beach, FL, U.S.A.

Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. Fine condition brown boards with a white spine and gold spine lettering contained in a fine condition non price-clipped color illustrated dust jacket. Includes List of Other Books by James Tobin; Author Dedication; Prologue: Decoration Day, 1899; Epilogue; Acknowledgments; Notes; A Note on Sources; Index; About the Author and Illustration Credits. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs, diagrams and a section of black-and-white photographic plates. The upper right jacket tip is lightly rubbed (see photographs). " 'For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life.' So wrote a quiet young Ohioan in 1900, one in an ancient line of men who had wanted to fly - men who wanted it passionately, fecklessly, hopelessly. But now, at the turn of the twentieth century, Wilbur Wright and a scattered handful of other adventurers conceived a conviction that the dream lay at last within reach, and in a headlong race across ten years and two continents, they competed to conquer the air. James Tobin, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography, has at last given this inspiring story its definitive telling. For years Wright and his younger brother, Orville, experimented in utter obscurity, supported only by their exceptional family. Meanwhile, the world watched as the imperious Samuel Langley, armed with a rich contract from the U.S. War Department and all the resources of the Smithsonian Institution, sought to scale up his unmanned models to create the first manned flying machine. But while Langley became obsessed with flight as a problem of power, the Wrights grappled with it as a problem of balance. Thus their machines took two very different paths - his toward oblivion, theirs toward the heavens. As Tobin relates, the Wrights' 1903 triumph at Kitty Hawk, however hallowed in American lore, was ill-reported and disbelieved. So, while the two brothers struggled to transform their delicate contraption into a practical airplane, others moved to overtake them as the leading pioneers of flight. In France, rivals scoffed at the Wrights even as they rushed to imitate them. At home, the great inventor Alexander Graham Bell seized the fallen banner of his friend Langley and thrust it into the hands of a circle of young daredevils, urging them "to get into the air." From this group emerged the motorcyclist Glenn Curtiss, "fastest man in the world," whose aerial challenge to Wilbur Wright culminated in an unforgettable showdown over New York harbor. To Conquer the Air is a hero's tale of overcoming obstacles within and without that plumbs the depths of creativity and character. With a historian's accuracy and a novelist's eye, Tobin has captured the interplay of remarkable personalities at an extraordinary moment in our history. In the centennial year of human flight, To Conquer the Air is itself a heroic achievement." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps. Seller Inventory # 004848

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