Customer Reviews

Dawn Over Kitty Hawk: The Novel of the Wright Brothers

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There is an old pilot's trick for looking at things...you're more likely to see something if you look slightly away from where you expect to see it, be it the fighter pilot looking for the speck of another aircraft, or the soaring pilot staring for the glint of wings of a circling sailplane in an uprising air current. Peripheral vision is more sensitive and by not looking directly at something, it paradoxically makes it easier to see. And this is the way Walter Boyne's Dawn over Kitty Hawk, the Novel of the Wright Brothers works. By looking at the Orville and Wilbur and their complex family in fictional form, he allows us to see a truly vivid portrait of their accomplishments, set in a fascinating age in American history.

A former Director of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Boyne weaves many of the major characters from the dawn of flight into a gripping tale that covers everything from the arrogance of much of the scientific establishment of the period to the byzantine wheeling and dealings of the robber baron financiers and their accomplices. Yet he never loses sight of the brilliance, hard work, determination and unbelievable courage that it took for the Wrights to launch forth into the unknown ocean of the air. Boyne's career as an Air Force pilot enables him to convey the feel and danger of those first flights in a way that puts the reader in the air with the Wrights as they struggle to understand the mysteries of flight. He takes the reader along, all the way from the first tentative gliding flights, through the crashes that led to mastery of control and power, ending in their triumphant flights in France and world acclaim.

The aviation enthusiast will recognize Santos-Dumont, Glenn Curtiss, Professor Langley, and many of the other characters, and there are other historic figures who play their parts in Boyne's novel. There is only one significant character who never really existed but even he contributes to the historical verisimilitude of the novel and is actually a composite of two historical figures. I won't spoil it by revealing the character, but it will take a fairly serious interest in aviation history to recognize him.

Dawn over Kitty Hawk is an imaginative, highly enjoyable contribution to understanding and celebrating that first flight one hundred years ago at Kitty Hawk on 17 December 1903,

Dawn Over Kitty Hawk is a wonderful book. I had the sense that I was a fly on the wall watching history in the making. This book gives the reader an "insiders look" at the Wrights' personal and business conflicts, and demonstrates that Wilbur and Orville Wright are a classic study in the good old American success story. Walter Boyne cleverly weaves common and little-known facts into a believable story. This is the way they should teach history, instead of just memorizing facts. Dawn Over Kitty Hawk also debunks the common notion that a nonfiction writer cannot write good fiction. This will make your summer reading more enjoyable.

This is a great telling of a great story -- how the Wright brothers came to be the first human beings to accomplish powered, heavier-than-air flight. As this historical novel makes clear, they did it by being the first men to take a methodical, scientific look at what was required to accomplish not only flight, but controlled, competent powered flight. The Wrights were giants--they were years ahead of their rivals. This novel explains that the Wrights first had to originate, from scratch, all of the mathematics and engineering of how to build a true lifting wing. They then had to design, from scratch, a means to control the aircraft in flight by means of warping wing controls--essentially the same methods we use today. These were staggering achievements that the Wrights did not "luck into." On top of these achievements, since there was no suitable gasoline motor to power the Wright Flyer, why, the Wrights simply designed a suitable engine, from scratch, which at the time was the only suitable engine for powered flight on the planet. In point of fact, between Wilbur Wright's methodical, mathematical approach, and Orville Wright's ingenius mechanical aptitude and intuitive grasp of the problem of flight, the Wrights represented a rare combination of scientific rigor and engineering finesse. They were a decade or more ahead of their competition. The best part of this novel is the manner in which it explains in layman's terms what the scientific-engineering problems were that mankind faced circa 1900 to accomplish heavier-than-air flight. The telling of how the Wrights solved these problems makes a great story.

The novel debunks a number of myths that sometimes persist today when the story of early manned flight is told. Professor Langely was not merely unlucky in his attempt to build his "Grand Aerodrome" (a US-government sponsored project to build the first airplane). In reality, like all of the Wright's competitors, he failed to grasp the fundamental problem of flight--the lifting wing and the need to control the aircraft in three dimensions. This is why each of his attempts promptly crashed into the ocean. Not until they frankly copied the Wright concepts and designs did the Wrights' competitors literally get off the ground.

The novel also provides a fascinating look at the business conflicts between the Wrights on the one hand, and their rivals on the others, as the Wrights sought to make an honest profit from their achievements. This is a wonderful story in its own right, told well.

The Wrights were, quite simply, giants. This novel does a fine job of impressing the reader with the magnitude of their achievements, while still showing us that the Wrights (and their colleagues and rivals) were human beings with the usual array of human failings.

While rummaging around a local Dollar General Store, I came across this book which, I am happy to say, I bought new for 75 cents. It sounded interesting and I took it home. I laid it down and looked at it for weeks ... then, one day, I took the journey.

"Dawn Over Kitty Hawk" is categorized as a novel. While I might concur that Walter J. Boyne took some liberties ..... I mean, what biographer doesn't? This book is much more a biography than a novel.

While reading I took the time to look up information about the Wright Brothers and the race to develop the first "controllable" power flying machine. Boyne is dead on with respect to his facts.

Boyne goes further in delving into the minds of Wilbur and Orville Wright than most Wright biographers have.

It is a fascinating and informative read.

Densel Myers
Yukon, Oklahoma

Having written an historical novel myself ("Devil in the North Woods), I recognize the result of many long hours of research and the skill needed to bring history to life for the reader.

Walt Boyne has taken the well-known story of aviation icons, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and breathed life into what is all-too-often dry history. Quickly, the story carries you into their lives, thoughts, hopes and fears as these two amazing young men bucked the trends of conventional wisdom and the opinions of men allegedly possessing far more experience.

The result is the very human story of true genius at work. If their efforts and results were not documented facts, it would be hard to believe. With compassion and insight, Boyne has created a tour-de-force for all aviation and history fans!

A literary agent approached me a few years ago with a proposal for a Wright Brothers novel, and I'm glad that I passed it up: I simply would not have matched Walt Boyne's excellent "Dawn Over Kitty Hawk." Boyne's intimate knowledge not only of the Wrights' aeronautical triumph but the personal and family influences that drove them is exceptional, affording the reader essentially two books in one. Naturally, the focus is upon their struggle to unlock the mystery of the ages--powered flight--but Boyne expertly weaves them into the fabric of the times. The brothers' domineering father, their beloved sister, and the large supporting cast (both pro and con!) allow us to appreciate the full extent of their stunning achievement.
Wilbur and Orville Wright were essential American types: loners who bet everything upon themselves, succeeding in the face of the scientific conventional wisdom of their era, which was found wanting.
You may enjoy DOKH as an historic novel or as an insider's view of the workings of their marvelous Flyer. In either case, you will not be disappointed.

I was captivated by Dawn over Kitty Hawk from start to finish. By using an artful combination of historical fact and novelized dialogue, Boyne illuminates the events surrounding man's invention of powered flight with an astonishing clarity. The remarkable genius of Wilbur and Orville Wright, the complex intellectual bond between them, plus the dominating influence of their father, Bishop Wright, is fully revealed and explained at last. With a cast of genuine characters--Augustus Herring, who claimed to have flown first, Samuel Langley, who failed despite government support, Alexander Graham Bell, who wanted to bring his inventive talents to the forefront of aviation, Glenn Curtiss, who wanted to turn aviation into a business, and Octave Chanute, who wanted to bring all of the disparate elements together--Boyne very successfully recreates one of the most compelling dramas of the last century. Anyone with the slightest interest in 20th centuty history ought to read this book.

Dawn Over Kitty Hawk is a first class narrative history of the early years of flight, not only the Wright brothers, but skillfully weaving in the story of others. This is a first class story of the rivalry that existed as man tried to imitate birds and fly through the air with the greatest of ease. It is informative as well as entertaining.

This is a fabulous classic underdog story. It demonstrates that the Wright brothers were not just "man against machine" in unlocking the mysteries of flight. The Wrights were also fighting against fierce competition, against other brilliant men, against accepted yet erroneous engineering standards, and against each other, sometimes, as they melded their own human, distant personalities into one for the cause.

Tremendous contrasts accentuate the challenge. For example, Langley had the financial backing of both the Smithsonian and the Federal Government; the Wright brothers spent the money they made selling bicycles. Langley's launch device alone cost $20,000; the Wrights launch device cost $4 (that's four dollars). Others worked on heavier-than-air flight for decades; the Wrights solved the problem in 4 years.

If you love stories of success based upon single-minded determination, you won't want to miss this one. Never give up!

Most of the previous reviewers seem to be very knowledgeable about aviation history. I know next to nothing about it. I have vacationed on the Outer Banks, have been to the Wright Brothers Memorial there and knew the basics of the story but that's about it.

This book really brought the characters alive - not only the Wright Brothers but a whole cast of others (many of which I had not heard of before) involved in the quest for flight. The reader really feels like they get to know the people, their personalities, and their perspectives about their own and the Wright Brothers in this great achievement. Also enlightening to me was the continued competition and controversy even after the Wright Brothers' famous 1903 flight.

The book is well written, a relatively quick read, and will reward anyone with even a passing interest in the Wright Brothers and this period in the history of flight.