Fascinating and inspiring On 17 December 1903 Orville Wright took off in the Wright Flyer and flew for twelve seconds, covering a distance of 105 feet. Over the course of the day Orville and his brother Wilbur made a further three flights. They had achieved their seemingly impossible dream: they had built a plane that could fly.

How did these brothers come to invent the first successful powered aeroplane? And who were these two men that changed the course of history?

Ian Mackersey’s authoritative book charts the development of the Orville and Wilbur’s flying machines from initial designs to the famous twelve second flight through to the aftermath of this historic moment when the brothers continued to improve on their inventions against rising international competition. The Wright Brothers draws upon a wealth of previously unpublished Wright family correspondence to provide insight into the personalities of these two remarkable men and the triumphs and tragedies of their family.

So many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this! This was such a splendid read. The story of the Wright Brothers is so special and the author more than did it justice. I have read other works about the Wright Brothers but still learned much and I enjoyed the ride! I would highly recommend to anyone wanting to better understand the Wright Brothers tale. Important/vital American (and World) history.

I am a dedicated Wright Brothers fan. This book was excellent to read and totally fed my love and interest in the subject of aviation and these heroes

Thank you to Net Galley and Sapere Books for the chance to read and review this book. The opinions expressed are my own.
Even though this book is quite long, it is well worth it. I have always been fascinated with airplanes, so this book caught my eye right away. It is the story of flight as well as the story of the Wright Brothers and their family. It was so interesting to learn about how hard they worked on their flying machine-basically they gave up their life. I also enjoyed learning about all of the other inventors around the world, and their efforts to create a flying machine. This book has so much information, and I learned a lot. If you are interested in learning about flight and the Wright Brothers, you will love this book. It is a very comprehensive, well-written biography! Highly recommend!

A splendid biography of the Wright Brothers -- and their father and sister, without whom the Wright Flyer might never have got off the ground. Originally published in 2003, the book by New Zealander Ian Mackersey is now available as an ebook for the first time. I read it over the course of two days, spellbound by the family whose tribulations and triumphs Mr Mackersey evokes as few writers are able to do. It's a long story (the out-of=print hardcover runs to 544 pages) but it seldom flags, whether we're learning about the aspect ratio of a wing or the late-in-life romance of Katharine Wright. They were rigid people, consumed by religion, the science of flight, suspicion of the outside world, and their love for one another. I was often irritated by them, yet couldn't help envying how the four of them worked so closely and supported one another so heartily that there was scarcely room in their lives for anyone else. How Wilbur and Orville made history's first powered flight, in a weird craft on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, is an oft-told tale that Mr Mackersey makes new again. Their stiff-backed belief in themselves then led them into endless battles with their enemies, including the Smithsonian Institution, which until 1942 insisted that its own Samuel Langley had "invented" the airplane as we know it today.

They protected their patents so fiercely that they not only stalled American aviation for ten years but neglected to keep pace with developments elsewhere. (Their crucial advance was "wing-warping," which enabled the Wright Flyer to make banked turns under perfect control. Rivals soon got the same effect by using small flaps between the wings or at the tips or on the trailing edge, with the last proving to be the method still used today.) The Wrights sued, and sued, and sued. As a result, when the US went to war against Germany in 1917, American pilots had to fly British and French warplanes, and no aircraft from the Wright company ever got near the front. In the end, the brothers' company was absorbed by a rival to form the Curtiss-Wright corporation that built so many American warplanes of the Second World War.