“The Wright Brothers” by David McCullough – Steering for the Sun

It would be safe to bet that the dream of flight is one that has been stuck in people's heads ever since the first bird was witnessed, God-knows how many thousands of years ago.

The attempts to conquer the skies were numerous throughout history, and sometimes downright hilarious (the Chinese rocket chair by Wan Hu, for instance). Ultimately though, our ceaseless efforts culminated in the creation of airplanes not too long ago, with the Wright brothers making the first of them.

We've all been briefly introduced to them in our primary school textbooks, but as David McCullough shows it quite skillfully in The Wright Brothers, there was infinitely more about the two men than that defining moment when they heralded the age of flight. As it happens, they were two geniuses holding not much more than high-school diplomas to their names.

Their true development in terms of intellect and curiosity most certainly took place during their childhood, one marked by the absence of indoor plumbing and electricity... but the presence of oh so many books.

Eventually, the two brothers defied odds time and time again, starting everything from scratch and putting themselves at risk innumerable times for the sole sake of achieving this one dream that has escaped so many throughout the ages.

Basically, this book is about a complete a review of the Wright brothers' life we are going to find. McCullough seems to have dived deeper than anyone else on this subject, pulling his countless facts from private diaries, private correspondence letters, notebooks, public records, and even scrapbooks whenever he could get their hands on them.

Through his research McCullough successfully manages to paint an extremely complete picture of the brothers as genius inventors, underdogs who defied all odds, and ultimately, normal human beings who managed to achieve the extraordinary.

Wilbur and Orville Wright

Though perhaps it's hard to believe that a brief history book subject can make for an enthralling read, it is safe to say that the Wright brothers' lives had more than enough excitement for a few tomes.

Thanks to the author's skillful, smooth and captivating narration it feels like we are reading the story of two brothers who have nothing but each other and their intelligence, dead-set on taking on the whole world and push the limits of what is considered possible for humanity.

The difficulties they had to surmount would have been the end of many people, and perhaps that is what makes their story so attractive; we never get tired of hearing about human resilience and the power of a strong character.

McCullough makes it a point to makes us understand not only what happened, but also what went through the heads of all those involved with the brothers.

We become well-acquainted with a large cast of interesting characters, many of whom were slowly forgotten by history but nevertheless played an important part in ensuring things ended up the way they did today.

If you are interested in humanity's dream of flight, it's eventual success in taking to the skies, and the extraordinary journey that the people behind it went through to make the modern world possible, then The Wright Brothers is a must-read for you.

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David McCullough David McCullough is an American-born historian, narrator and author who won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, in addition to which he is also the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His two Pulitzer Prize-winning books, Truman and John Adams, were adapted to a film and a min-series.