The Bishop's Boys
A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright
Crouch, Tom
First Edition. First Printing.
The Bishop's Boys, Tom Crouch's new biography of Wilbur and Orville Wright, offers fresh insight into one of the most important stories of the twentieth Century. Stripping away the layers of myth, adulation, and controversy, this book shows the Wrights as they were. Brilliant, self-trained engineers, their unique blend of native talent, character, and family experience perfectly suited them to the task of invention, but left them ill-prepared to face a world of skeptics, rivals, business executives, and government officials. The result is a portrait that will surprise and delight even those who think they know something of the two brothers from Dayton.
Crouch, a leading historian of aviation, has made use of a treasure trove of Wright family correspondence and diaries overlooked by previous writers. He tells a tale within a tale, skillfully weaving the story of the invention of the airplane into the drama of a unique and unforgettable family, bound together by devotion to one another, absolute faith in their own righ-teousness, and a deep distrust of the world beyond their doorstep. He shows us exactly how and why these two obscure bachelors from Dayton, Ohio, were able to succeed where so many better trained, better financed rivals had failed.
Step by step, he leads readers back over the path blazed by the Wright brothers, capturing the essence of their genius in the process. It is all here - brilliant flashes of insight balanced against moments of discouragement; long hours of work at a home-made wind tunnel followed by the exhilaration of a few brief seconds in the air; the triumph of success offset by the struggle to gain recognition and market the invention.
But the story of the invention of the airplane is only the core of The Bishop's Boys. The book opens with an unforgettable portrait of Bishop Milton Wright, a father who was determined to guide his children along the path of righteousness, and closes with the death of Orville Wright in 1948. Along the way we share the years of brilliant inventive effort leading to the triumph of practical flight; taste the breathtaking excitement of early exhibition flying; and experience the long struggle against those who sought to steal the honor and the rewards due the inventors of the airplane.
An intellectual adventure and a moving portrait of two men and their family, The Bishop's Boys is great both as biography and as history, a classic account of a classic American saga.
Hardcover with dust jacket
606 Seiten / pages
photos
very good condition
New York - London - 1989 - W.W. Norton & Company
Art.Nr. 13627
