1903 is one of those dates that is etched into history: The year that men flew in the persons of two brothers from Ohio. McCullough is one of the deans of historical biography, and an expert on America circa 1900, so this book is of course quite good.

The picture of the Wrights that he paints is one of methodological devotion to their dream of controlled flight. While men had been dreaming for ages, it was the Wrights who finally achieved that dream, recognizing that the first step had to be controlled flight, then powered flight, then aviation. The Wrights obsessively studied the flight of birds, built a wind tunnel to find the proper shape for an airfoil, and finally launched their Flyer at Kitty Hawk.

Some men, like Teddy Roosevelt and John Adams, seemed destined for greatness, their steps already marked by stars. The Wrights were the exact opposite, and most creditably, even as they became the center of the world they did not become infatuated with fame and with power. Flight itself was the thing, and what they wanted was enough money not to prove a burden to others.

What this book reveals, which I didn't know, was that the birth of flight was far spottier than might be expected. After their first flight in 1903, the Wrights didn't fly again until 1905, and it took several years to convince the American governments and European powers that flight was worth investing in, even as the brothers collected accolades. MCCullough stints the patent battle with Curtis that shaped early American aviation, and ends in a melancholy sense. Neither Wright brother, nor their sister Katherine, ever married. Wilbur died of Typhoid fever in 1912. Orville lived until 1948, but suffered from the effects of a 1908 crash, and ceased to fly in 1918.