Review: The Wright Brothers

June 16, 2015August 26, 2025 / rtrube54 / 4 Comments

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Summary: McCullough traces the Wright brothers successful efforts to develop the first powered aircraft to successfully, fly from their home town bicycle shop in Dayton, to their trials at Kitty Hawk, to their global success. The book also highlights the importance of their sister Katherine throughout their efforts.

“If I were giving a young man advice as to how he might succeed in life, I would say to him, pick out a good father and mother, and begin life in Ohio.” –Wilbur Wright

The story is a famous one and yet masterfully told by biographer and historian David McCullough, who once again has turned archival work into a vivid narrative of the beginnings of powered flight. He traces the Wright brothers from their childhood, including Wilbur’s facial injuries, which led to a period of voracious reading, and Orville’s nearly fatal brush with typhoid fever to the beginnings of their bicycle shop, Wilbur’s letter to the Smithsonian to collect information about attempts at flight, to their tests at Kitty Hawk, first of gliders to learn wing design and lateral stabilizers, to their first powered plane flights. What is remarkable is that the brothers spent less than $1000, and all of it their own money, to accomplish this. By contrast, Samuel Langley spent $70,000, much of it government money, in an attempt that ended in the Potomac River.

The second half of the book details their attempts to convince governments of the success of their efforts, while continuing to refine their machines. One of the most interesting aspects of this narrative were the efforts of Katherine, their Oberlin-educated school teacher sister, on their behalf. From managing the bicycle shop with its fractious but gifted mechanic Charles Taylor to nursing Orville after a crash during a demonstration flight at Fort Myers to caring for an aging father and consulting on the business, Katherine played a key role in the success of the Wrights.

There was what seemed a bittersweet end to all this, as Wilbur dies of typhoid shortly after returning from Europe in 1912, exhausted from training flyers and fighting patent suits. Orville manages better, eventually selling the company and living with Katherine and the Bishop in a mansion in the Dayton suburb of Oakwood. But he witnessed the plane he helped invent used as a new weapon of devastation, as well as in commercial flight.

Several things seemed to contribute to the Wright’s success beyond their parentage and being born in Ohio.

1. They developed skills in making and improving machines in printing and cycling business, learning how to machine parts and work with materials.

2. They knew how to work hard, and yet they rigorously observed the sabbath. At Kitty Hawk, they first built (and re-built after storms) their own hanger, then assembled the plane, sewing the wing fabric, and then conducted the tests. Then they returned to Dayton to manufacture their next season’s supply of bicycles in their own machine shop.

3. They were rigorous experimentalists. In contrast to others like Octave Chanute, they did not simply theorize about flight. They rigorously tested designs, first as kites, then in a homemade wind tunnel, and finally through lots of time in the air learning about the issues of keeping equilibrium in the air and developing proper control mechanisms to do that. Wilbur Wright once said, “No bird soars in a calm.”

4. They had an integrity that didn’t make claims that couldn’t be substantiated by demonstrations. They worked out of the limelight, and with their own funds, and avoided publicity until they had both designed a plane that anyone could be trained to fly, and that flew reliably. At times this meant facing the skepticism of even hometown folks and the U.S government as to what they actually had accomplished.

What is fascinating is that they accomplished all of this with only a high school education, and mostly on the basis of their own resources. McCullough, who has written biographies of Harry Truman and John Adams, and narratives of the Johnstown Flood, and the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal, has once again given us a vivid portrait both of these two brothers, and their extraordinary sister, from Dayton, and a monumental human accomplishment. This is a great summer read!

What I’m Reading — June 2015

June 11, 2015June 12, 2015 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

I’m in kind of a crunch right now between back to back trips to Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. So this post will be briefer, and perhaps not so carefully crafted as some. Just thought I’d catch you up on what i’m reading right now and my reactions as I’m in the midst of several books.

Just started Keith Thomson’s Private Doubt, Public Dilemma, which I downloaded from Netgalley. Looks like an interesting exploration on the religion and science front, exploring cutting edge issues in the biosciences. This is taken from a Yale lecture series. A bit curious why his primary inspirations are Jefferson and Darwin and where that will go. I actually think one of the more interesting American figures to deal with religion-science issues was B.B. Warfield.

Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up by Simon Chan is trying to do just what the title suggests. He wants to explore Asian contributions to Christian theology, not by listening to academics, Asian or otherwise, but rather the people who make up Asian churches, Christians on the ground in these cultures. What a novel idea. Just getting into it. Chan is a bit of a dense read, but I’m intrigued!

I’ve loved everything David McCullough has written and am finding The Wright Brothers no exception. Interesting fact that I discovered was that the Wright’s spent less than $1000, and all of that their own money, to get the point of putting a plane in the sky at Kitty Hawk. A government project costing $70,000 ended up a terrible failure in the Potomac! I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but McCullough tells a riveting tale!

Timothy Ward’s Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God gives a contemporary, yet reformed perspective on the doctrine of the scripture. The novel thing is that he doesn’t start from systematics but from the Bible itself. He also draws on “speech-act” theory, which understands scripture as a type of divine speech act. I’ve seen caricatures of reformed thinking about scripture set up as straw men and destroyed. It would be better for critics to take on thoughtful writers like Ward.

Finally, our Dead Theologians reading group is discussing a collection of Charles Spurgeon sermons under the title An All-Around Ministry. These were given at a series of pastors conferences Spurgeon helped host. They sparkle with wit and contain much wise counsel for any in ministry.

That’s what’s on my book stand at present. Stay tuned for reviews at a blog near you!

Mr. President

October 7, 2014 / rtrube54 / 3 Comments

I am in the midst of reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris and thoroughly enjoying it! My hunch is that you have to be a terrible writer to write a boring biography of Teddy Roosevelt. He was interesting from childhood! This is the first of a three volume effort by Morris and I am delighted to say that the other two are waiting on my “to be read” stack!

It seems that this is a wonderful time if you are a lover of presidential biographies. Of course, we had the recent PBS series on the Roosevelts (it is really just a happy coincidence that the Morris biographies came to the top of the stack at this time!). It also happens that Doris Kearns Goodwin has written on Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in The Bully Pulpit, a book I received for Christmas that comes next after the Morris bios. I happen to love everything Doris Kearns Goodwin writes about from her beloved Brooklyn Dodgers to Abraham Lincoln in Team of Rivals. For those fascinated by all things Roosevelt, she also wrote about FDR and Eleanor in an earlier book, No Ordinary Time.

Moving beyond the Roosevelts, there are a host of wonderful biographies that have appeared in the last ten years or so. First to come to mind are David McCullough’s biographies of Truman and John Adams. I happen to think the biography of Truman is the better of the two in exploring the character of this president who emerged from the shadow of Franklin Roosevelt, even though Adams probably had the more interesting life. Not too long ago I read and reviewed Harlow Giles Unger’s John Quincy Adams. John Quincy struggled in the shadow of his father but was a child prodigy, an ambassador in six countries, was a one-term president like his father, went on to congress, and argued the Amistad case before the Supreme Court. He died in the House. He was probably one of our most distinguished ex-Presidents. I’ve read several biographies of Thomas Jefferson but still think the best was Dumas Malone’s six volume study of Jefferson and His Time.

I could go on and on but perhaps the interesting question I ask myself is “why the fascination with presidential biographies?” At least for me I don’t think there is a single reason. One is a certain interest in leadership and how it may be exercised both well and badly. We certainly have examples of both in our presidential history! Another is that American presidential biographies are really American history with skin on it! I’ve read both extensively but to understand both the influences and limits presidents faced in trying to shape events is instructive. It took even a Lincoln three years to find a general in Grant who would fight, and it also took a Lincoln to hold the North to its task in the absence of a Grant.

Perhaps I read these, even as I read history more generally to understand how we get here. The actions of Presidents past have shaped the Presidency now. Sometimes, I think there is a bit of a longing as well that we might find one like one of the “great” presidents of the past to fill the office. Reading the bios and the history, it seems that somehow, the greatest of presidents occupied the office at the most perilous junctures in our history. Is it that ordinary people rise to extraordinary heights in such times? Or is it a kind of divine providence that we might pray for as the need faces us? One thing is clear is that there have also been mediocrities in the office and if we are praying people, we can pray to be delivered of such folk, particularly in perilous times.

What are your favorite presidential biographies? And why do you like reading them?