What I learned from reading Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies by Lawrence Goldstone.
As the saga of early flight becomes more distant, it gains rather than loses fascination.
Air travel is now so commonplace, has been so widely experienced, that those who risked their lives every time they took an airplane up, who flew an open aircraft, totally exposed to the elements and without seat restraints, who took their machines to great heights in freezing cold or in pelting rain, who died and watched their friends die, pushing up against the limits of performance, have become almost mythical figures.
They were that, of course, but they were also simply young and eager men and women embracing a new technology with the breathless zeal of youth.
The fear of death would dissuade them no more than it did the first climber to summit Everest.
That is an excerpt from the epilogue of the book that I want to talk to you about today, which is the Wright brothers, Glenn Curtis, and the battle to control the skies.
And it was written by Lawrence Goldstone.
So two weeks ago, for episode 239, I reread David McCullough's fantastic biography of the Wright brothers.
In that book, Glenn Curtis is mentioned several times.
Glenn was the most formidable of the Wright brothers competitors at the very beginning of the age of flight.
And so I immediately started looking for a biography on him.
As I searched, I came across this book.
I immediately started reading the sample on Kindle, and I was immediately blown away by not only the quality of the writing, but just how insane the stories in the first few pages were.
I'm going to read something out from the back of the book.
It says, a meticulously researched account of the first few hectic, tangled years of aviation and the curious characters who pursued it.
And so I want to go right to the beginning.
This is the part that I read on the Kindle and immediately ordered the paperback version, which I hold in my hand right now.
There are a lot of characters we're gonna go over today in a lot of detail.
This book took me well over 20 hours to read and to digest.
So it says.
On May 30, 1912, Wilbur Wright died peacefully in his own bed.