Table of Contents

Preface to the Dover Edition Preface I. The House on Hawthorn Street 2. The Flying Men 3. In the Dunes of Indiana 4. The Twisted Box 5. A Perilous Passage 6. The Outer Banks 7. A Two-Man Association 8. The Camp at Big Hill 9. Trade Secrets 10. Well-Digging 11. Movable Wings 12. Two Talks 13. The First Flyer 14. A Race with the Weather 15. An Experiment in Aerodynamics 16. The First Four Flights 17. Fiction and Fact 18. The Year of the Fair 19. The Finished Flyer 20. A Bold Performance in California 21. The Thorn Tree 22. One Million Francs 23. "Frame, But Not Weatlh" 24. Bell's Boys 25. The Brothers Abroad 26. A Letter of Information 27. Return to Kitty Hawk 28. Wilbur Has the Jimjams 29. "Nous sommes battus" 30. Fort Myer 31. A Tragedy and a Comic Interlude 32. Camp d'Auvours 33. The Homecoming 34. Cross-Country 35. Herring and the Curtiss 36. The Races at Reims 37. The Last Public Flights 38. The Patent Wars Begin 39. End of a Friendship 40. Exit Herring 41. The Exhibition Business 42. Who Invented Wingwarping? 43. Vin Fiz 44. Wilbur 45. Company President 46. The Aerodrome Affair 47. End of the Patent Wars 48. War Comes to Dayton 49. Orville Alone 50. A Feud and a Celebration 51. End of the Feud 52. Orville's Shoes Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews

As a former Library of Congress aeronautics editor who worked on the Wright papers, Howard is well qualified to write about the brothers and to redress the rumors, claims and falsifications that followed their successful flights. He establishes early on that the Wrights were not mere tinkerers who owned a Dayton bicycle shop but that they had sufficient background in mathematics and physics to be aware of the theory as well as the practice of flight. Much of the book is devoted to the brothers' efforts to market their invention, which proceeded slowly because they were not businessmen, and the difficulties they had with those who asserted that they, not the Wrights, were the first to fly. Throughout the biography there runs the thread of two loving brothers and the warm family life that helped to sustain them in their struggles. Commendably, Howard describes the technical features of their work in a fashion quite comprehensible to lay readers. A fine job. Photos not seen by PW. History Book Club alternate. (June 5)

In 1903 at Kitty Hawk, a man-carrying machine flew under its own power without losing speed or altitude. Among this book's many merits is making clear just what the Wright brothers really achieved before, during, and after that epic flight. Howard seems well qualified for the task. After Air Force service in World War II he joined the Library of Congress team that edited The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright (1953). His lively account is admirably well documented and more judiciously balanced than most other writings about the men who invented the airplane. For most libraries. B.C. Hacker, General Science Dept., Oregon State Univ. , Corvallis