summary of the wright brothers by david mccullough

As with his other books, McCullough also evidences a particular goal in his research and writing. I breezed right through The Wright Brothers, enjoying this simple study of these great American inventors. The only speculation I have is that possibly, in his research, he discovered these stories weren’t entirely true. In the children’s book Wilbur and Orville Wright: The Flight to Adventure, for example, author Louis Sabin spent 38 pages telling of many childhood adventures that McCullough ignored, and only five pages on their studies, practices, and successes in flight! I get that Sabin’s book was geared towards children, but the stories were so fascinating that McCullough’s readers could have learned a great deal from them too. His first chapter, “Beginnings,” mentions how tragically the loss of their mother hit the family, and it described some of their earlier experiences that help encourage them towards the study of flight-incidents such as the dreadful hockey hit and the gift of the French “helicopter”-but it did not delve into some of the other telling stories that I’ve read elsewhere.

I found it interesting that this book did not deal much with the brothers’ early lives. This was one aspect that set Mornings on Horseback apart from Edmund Morris’ The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. I really like this aspect of McCullough’s research and writing, for as he delves deeply into the letters and journals of those intimately involved in the lives of his subjects, he recognizes how vivacious those side characters were themselves and helps us readers get a sense of it as well. This book introduces us not only to the Wright Brothers as the title suggests, but also to their younger sister Katherine and their Father, The Bishop, both of whom play an important role in the brothers’ character and development.

I think I’ll delay that read until I get through Theodore Rex and have greater American context to drive my interest in the Panama Canal. I had actually already begun McCullough’s The Paths Between the Seas but couldn’t seem to get into it, mainly because I’m unfamiliar with South American geography and French politics. I chose this book from the hundred currently on my shelf in America because I recently enjoyed reading David McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback and wanted another well-documented and insightful book from the era of the late 19th century.

Summary of the wright brothers by david mccullough