The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

I have always felt some affinity for the Wright brothers, ever since we went to North Carolina when I was in high school and we visited the Wright brothers' museum in Kitty Hawk. Then Tommy and I went again when we lived in North Carolina, and the Outer Banks became one of my favorite places in the world. I loved visiting there, and I especially remember walking around in the sand dunes in Kitty Hawk when we visited in November, exactly where the brothers made their first flights. With all that in mind, I was excited to listen to this biography about them and their accomplishments. This book mainly covers the years of their innovation and flights, from 1900-1910. In their spare time after working in their bicycle shop, they spent years conducting experiments and studying mathematics and physics to figure out how they could build a flyer that would fly like a bird does. They spent hours observing birds and watching how they made their wings work, and read hundreds of books about how flight might work. It was really amazing to me how they persevered, and how they worked to discover the way to fly. They worked in the evenings and in all their free time for years before they ever even were able to build a plane that would work on its own. It really stuck in my mind how they were serious examples of grit (from Grit) and how they had passion and perseverance to work endlessly towards their goal and make greater and greater strides towards improving it, even when it would take years for them to get anywhere close to their goal. They seemed like true examples of some amazing qualities: humble, hard-working, respectful, stubborn and determined. Their opinions of themselves didn't change when they became famous, and they remained focused on their goals. I really admired them and thought it was pretty amazing how they did it. (It makes me wonder what I could accomplish if I had that much grit and passion about something.) It was also super interesting to learn about their flight demonstrations in America and in Europe and how amazing and awe-inspiring it was to the people then, since nobody had ever seen anything fly before.

Again, McCullough is pretty incredible at conducting detailed research, and it sounds like he read every single letter that they and their family ever wrote to each other. I also really liked how their family was so tight-knit and close with each other, and how they treated each other. The only thing that seemed a little off about their lives was how at the end of the book, he mentioned that they stopped flying altogether to take care of their patent lawsuits they were filing to stop people from stealing their ideas and to protect their legacies. I totally get that, but then on the other hand, it seems like they did kind of change their values from wanting to learn how to fly and to improve to do it better and better, to just wanting to make sure that everyone knew they were the first ones to do it. But, oh well. Good for them, it worked out and they're household names across the world still.