Customer Reviews

The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright

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For anyone really interested in the story of human flight, Tom Crouch's "The Bishop's Boys" is the book for you. Crouch has done a masterful job of telling the Wright's story, and what a story it is! Most legendary figures of history crumble when their lives are examined-- Wilbur and Orivlle Wright are more amazing the more you learn about them. Thanks to Crouch and "The Bishop's Boys", the entire story, warts and all, is finally put before the public in a well written, definitive, biography. I have studied and written about the Wright Brothers for years, and I always tell anyone who wants to learn more about these amazing brothers to read this book.

I've wanted to read Tom Crouch's book, The Bishop's Boys, ever since I visted Kitty Hawk, North Carolina for the first time while on vacation. I found the title intriguing. Even more intriguing was the idea that two parsonage children with little or no formal education beyond high school were responsible for the "world's first power-driven, heavier-than-air machine in which man made free, controlled, and sustained flight."

Mr. Crouch tells the tale in a way that does justice to both the men and the machine. By this I mean that neither overshadows the other. One comes to the end of the book convinced that the fates of both the men and the machine were inextricably intertwined. How this came to be is a story of wonder, some sadness, humor, and amazing human achievement.

In this book, Tom Crouch culminates his exhaustive research on the history of manned flight. All the players (and would-be players) are included from the Wright Brothers viewpoint. Crouch carefully examines the involvement/viewpoints of Chanute, Beloit, Langley, Curtiss and a host of contemporaries from Kings to children with intricate details of the Wright family itself. It sets one back so well in time that one feels you are sitting in the same room with Wilbur, Orville and Milton, their father. One can even sense that Wilbur and Orville might differ on their view of important events (i.e. The Wrights might never have flown if Wilbur had not been knocked cold playing ice hockey near the Soldier's Home).

Milton's religious influence and the Wright family tradition is shown to have played a key role in shaping Wilbur's decision to do something meaningful with his life after giving up a likely education at Yale and career in the ministry in his Dad's footsteps as a result of the hockey accident.

To me the book has a happy and sad part:

The happy part (the first half) deals with Wright family, history, ideas, experiments, inventions and basically seeing how the brothers (particularly Wilbur) came up with all their ideas and diligently and painstakingly pursued them.

The sad part (the last half) deals with the agony felt by Wilbur (before his death) and Orville for the rest of his life fighting a multitude of court cases over what they viewed as clear patent infringements. Orville is viewed as extreme and difficult to get along with (according quotes from to Charles Lindberg).

Only after Orville's death and World War 2 did the Wrights force the Smithsonian to back down and recant many of their publications related Samuel P. Langley, Orville insisted were untrue. Finally, their 1903 "First Flight" aircraft was returned to the Smithsonian from the British Museum where Orville insisted it remain as a protest until the Smithsonian retracted their views. Such stong uncompromising right/wrong views of Orville and Wilbur are traced to the Bishop (father) in trying to uphold conservative values while their church was split do to relaxing traditional values. The Wright family tradition of honesty and integrity is evident from cover to cover.

This is an excellent read, and you'll be anxious to pursue reading numerous other Wright books and artifacts in museums cited at the end.

Tom Crouch does an excellent job in telling the readers not only about the lives of Wilbur and Orville Wright, but about what made them tick, as well. A large chunk of the beginning is devoted to the story of their parents, especially their father, Milton Wright. The father, a preacher and bishop in the United Brethern denomination, stuck to his guns about certain beliefs, even when they led to scisms and lawsuits. Knowing this helps explain to the readers why the brothers did some things, particularly regarding the patent lawsuits, that seem selfish or greedy. Crouch gives us a portrait of the two that neither puts them on pedestals or demeans them, but shows them as humans.

The one drawback, at least for readers more interested in people than in their inventions, was that some of the information regarding the early planes could get awfully technical at times. I understood most of it, but it was a struggle, and it slowed the pace somewhat. Unfortunately, you probably can't have a decent biography of the Wrights without this information, and some might even enjoy it.

Tom Crouch does a wonderful job in bringing the story of the Wright brothers to life. He explains their social interactions, their different personality types and the family's ideals.

However when he starts to tell the story of the invention of the aeroplane (airplane) the disappointments mount. At this point the author could have focussed on the insightfulness and engineering brilliance of the Wright brothers. However the author seems unwilling or incapable of expressing how the Wright brothers were able to distil and redefine the ideas of their predecessors. The redefinition of Smeaton's coefficient, the choice of a dynamic approach to restore equilibrium, the experiments and formulae required to calculate the basic forces of flight and efficient propellor design are all given scant attention. The book's phobia of technical detail is epitomised by its reference at one stage to increasing the octane rating of the fuel to increase power. Unfortunately octane and its potential to produce greater power would not be understood until the '20s. The book then appears to have great difficulty in differentiating what the Wright brothers did in comparison with their rivals. Instead of demonstrating why wing warping was the basic concept behind all control systems in aeroplanes, the author resorts to bold assertions such as the Wright brothers were aware of ailerons and fully described them in their patent application. This is highly debatable and in my opinion WRONG! Furthermore any patent issue which may have gone against the Wrights is always described as a legal loophole and not given any further regard. Instead of defending the Wrights on their own merit the book seems to be compelled to detail feel good stories or nicknames of distant relatives and associates. The relevance of Orville's flying students' ancestors defeating the British (I'm assuming not single handedly as implied by the book) in the battle of Lake Erie in 1813 does seem somewhat irrelevent. I enjoyed the enthusiastic style of the writer, but in the end felt that the book was somewhat flat in conveying what the Wright brothers actually achieved on that historic December day in 1903.

With the 100th anniversary of the invention of the airplane coming up one can expect a surge of interest in the Wrights. Crouch's book was one of two biographies that came out at about the same time several years ago. Crouch did an admirable job in delving into the very tight-knit Wright family, and how its complex relationships molded the inventors. But the superior biography, the best one yet in my opinion, is "Wilbur and Orville" by Fred Howard. It is more technically informed and better written. However, for those with a real bug for the Wrights, by all means read both.

Very good biography. Details the events of the Wright brothers' lives quite well. I found especially interesting the section on their family lineage and background. It gave a feeling of them as once-removed from the frontier lifestyle, and also well described their place in midwestern American society, with the father leading the church efforts, their "modern woman" sister attending college, etc.

The book doesn't go into a great deal of technical detail on their inventive process. Crouch's colleague Peter Jakab has written an excellent book, "Visions of a Flying Machine," which fills that niche excellently.

My only qualm with the book was that as I was nearing the end, I couldn't help but thinking, "Yes, this is all the stuff that happened in their lives, but who WERE they?" Crouch is very exhaustive in covering all the events, esp. their fight for proper credit for the invention. But in the end, I didn't feel as if I had a feel for who they were as people.

Ironically, I felt that Jakab's "Visions" book told much more about who they were as people. This book focused on the invention period, and by really showing how they worked and thought, gave more of a feel of their personalities and humanity

Many years ago, while in my early teens, I stood in the Smithsonian (this was before the Natl. Air and Space Museum was built) and gazed in awe at the first airplane, suspended in its place of honor. THE FIRST AIRPLANE! How remarkable that such a fabulous historical artifact has been preserved.

Despite the somewhat odd focusing on Wilbur's and Orville's father, this book gives a good account of the lives of two brothers who epitomized what we Americans have always liked to believe about ourselves: that we are imaginative, clever, industrious, persistent, tenacious, equal to any challenge. Certainly that description can't fit all of us; but certainly it did fit these two national heroes.

I am enjoying this book very much. I'm not quite finished with it but can honestly say that it is very well written and very interesting to me.

Upon visiting Kill Devil Hills and walking the grounds there I was amazed at the ingenuity of these 2 brothers. What I didn't know was the depth of their character and the family loyalty that resonated thru their lives and contributed to their discoveries and inventions. They were certainly fallible humans and this is shown too. But the story told by Crouch only makes me respect the Wright brothers more than most of those I've studied in history.