James Tobin - To Conquer the Air

Praise for To Conquer the Air

Detailed, well written, and told with the grace of a symphony conductor making with his wand one grand and glorious whole out of many melodies... Tobin has written a history of early flight that ought to become the standard for this generation.

National Geographic Adventure

You dont have to be an aviation buff to be spellbound by this wonderfully told American success story.

Readers Digest

A dogged researcher and a great storyteller... Tobin beautifully re-creates the Wright brothers mental universe... Kudos to Tobin for capturing the challenge and thrills of this extraordinary individual and collective achievement in this well-written, enlightening book.

The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)

This extraordinarily well-written and deeply nuanced work is the best of the recent spate of books celebrating the Wright Brothers... A detailed yet truly exciting tale... this should stand as the definitive account of their life and times.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A remarkably fluent account of the technological obstacles to flying that had to be overcome, but also a moving narrative of the personal drama involved.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

A meticulous account of the grinding, day-to-day advances and setbacks, but also infected with the sheer wonder of taking wing.

Kirkus Reviews

Tobin tells his detailed, exacting story well and makes the mysteries of flight comprehensible. [He] brings the Wright Brothers out of the dustbin of history and into the readers imaginations... To Conquer the Air is a fine book that provides a signal service in illuminating the discovery of flight.

Bookreporter.com

Tobin transforms thorough research into a flowing narrative with news for even connoisseurs of Kitty Hawk.

Booklist

Of the many books being released in this centennial year to mark the Wright Brothers achievement, the one that best captures this wonderful all-American chili of a story is James Tobins To Conquer the Air .

Christianity Today

Superb.

San Jose Mercury News

To Conquer the Air is in every way a thrilling story that takes the Wright brothers out of their traditional isolation at Dayton and Kitty Hawk and places them front and center in a drama of invention, daring, competition, and eventual triumph.

Justin Kaplan, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography

Whether judged in terms of scholarship or writing, this is an outstanding narrative of the Wright brothers and their competitors race to fly. The story is compelling in itself, yet this book is larger than that story alone. It explores mans dreams, and what is required to transform a dream into reality. And it is a book that teaches us about heroismnot the kind that comes from a surge of adrenaline but the heroism that determines how one lives.

John Barry, author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America

James Tobin explains with meticulous clarity the mysteries of nature and the challenges of technology that vexed the Wright brothers pursuit of machine-powered flight. He also tells the riveting tale of their fevered rivalry with the imperious head of the Smithsonian Institution, Samuel Pierpont Langley, with fabled inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and with the brash daredevil Glenn Curtiss. How two homespun Midwestern tinkerers prevailed against such formidable competitors in the race to achieve the miracle of flight is a tale as thrilling as it is inspirational. An utterly engrossing read.

David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Freedom from Fear:

The American People in Depression and War, 1929 1945

To Conquer the Air differs from all previous books on the Wright brothers in that their rivals in the race for flight emerge from the background, full-bodied and three-dimensional for the first time. It will be many years before a livelier, more readable history of the invention of the airplane makes an appearance.

Fred Howard, author of Wilbur and Orville: A Biography of the Wright Brothers

What The Metaphysical Club was to the development of philosophic thought in America, this beautiful book is to the development of man in flight. Far more than a mere account of the Wright brothers triumph, To Conquer the Air is a yeasty, richly drawn evocation of an era and of the strange, visionary, obsessed, and difficult men who battled one another to claim it in their name.

Ron Powers, co-author of Flags of Our Fathers

A LSO BY J AMES T OBIN

Ernie Pyles War

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A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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New York, NY 10020

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Copyright 2003 by James Tobin

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Free Press trade paperback edition 2004

F REE P RESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Book design by Ellen R. Sasahara

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Tobin, James.

To conquer the air : the Wright Brothers and the great race for flight /
James Tobin.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Wright, Orville, 18711948. 2. Wright, Wilbur, 18671912.

3. AeronauticsUnited StatesHistory20th century.

4. FlightHistory20th century. I. Title.

TL540.W7T63 2003

629.13'0092'273dc21 2002044778

ISBN 0-684-85688-3

0-7432-5536-4 (Pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4391-3549-5 (eBook)

For my parents
James and Dorothy Tobin
with thanks and love

CONTENTS

Notes

Decoration Day, 1899

I FELT ITS PATHETIC PREEMINENCE IN A STREET OF MEAGER HOMES.

7 Hawthorn Street, Dayton, Ohio, about 1900

H IS FATHER AND SISTER had gone to Woodland Cemetery to plant flowers at the grave of his mother. His younger brother was busy elsewhere. It was a holiday, and the house was quiet. He could take care of the letter he had been meaning to write.