The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

Overall, this book was great.  It was informative.  It was well written.  It was great.  I loved the beginning, learning about the Wright family and their relationships with one another.  I enjoyed reading about the bike shop, and the determination of the brothers to learn all they could about flight.  I enjoyed the exploits in Europe, when they were pedaling their wares, so to speak, and the transformation of so many important people from skeptical to enthusiastic once the demonstrations began.  However, the middle.  I had a small problem with the middle.  You know, the part where they actually build a flying machine.  Kind of a crucial part of the story, right?  Basically the whole reason we know who the Wright brothers are, and why this book is being written.  I am almost embarrassed to admit this, but I found it dull.  I got really bogged down in trying to understand exactly what they were doing in their experiments.  McCullough describes it in detail, and for some reason I just wasn’t following.  I kept wanting a diagram or something (which is perhaps a sign I am more of a visual learner), because I just couldn’t put things together in my head.

So for a little while, my interest waned.  Which was disappointing, because I had been quite excited about this book, and I really wanted to like it.  Don’t mistake me, I don’t blame David McCullough one bit for my lack of interest in this part of the book.  I think he did a fine job of describing this vital part of the story.  The blame lies with me, and my lack of understanding (or desire to understand) in the realm of engineering.

But if I learned anything from the Wright brothers it was determination to see things through.  So, I put my head down and powered through the chapters I didn’t quite understand.  I used Google to find images of planes, and glossed over the details that weren’t getting through to me.  And then, once we got Wilbur in Paris, things picked up again, just like I thought they would.  The human interest piece of the story was center stage again, and the rest of the book was a delight.

I guess the moral of this story is: This was a great book.  If you find yourself bogged down in the middle, just power through.  It’ll turn around again, I promise.

Let me also say (in case it wasn’t painfully obvious) that I knew almost nothing about the Wright brothers before this book.  I knew they made a plane, and they did it first.  That’s about it.  So to read the details of their life, to see that they were the embodiment of the American Dream, was quite revelatory.  Two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, work hard, put in the hours, solve every problem that comes their way, and after years of work, finally unlock the mystery of flight.  It’s a beautiful thing, really.  And their relationship with each other, and their sister and father, was remarkable.  You see the clever wit they each had in their letters to one another.  The fact that Orville and Wilbur worked together, lived together, and experimented with flight together, without wanting to kill each other after doing this for years, is a testament to the type of people they were, and the strength of their family.  And the best part?  It’s all true!  A true story of hard work paying off, and making history.  It doesn’t get better than that.