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Race to the Sky: The Wright Brothers Versus the United States Government

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As one would expect of a topic of such singular historic import, there exists an extensive body of literature. The Wrights themselves were prolific diarists and recorders, there are piles of contemporary primary accounts--the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress could keep you occupied for decades--not to mention reams of commentary written in later years. Published in the centennial year of those first flights at Kill Devil Hills, author Goddard feels that a key driver of those events, the US government's "national crusade to achieve first flight," is still not as well known or understood as another momentous government initiative, President Kennedy's "Race to the Moon" program decades later.

Goddard is not only a historian but also a lawyer (and taught public policy at Trinity College) and thus is able to combine particularly salient strands of the story. The book is very engagingly written--this is no legal brief but a veritable nail-biter! Lots of quotes from the Wrights and from other books, easy on the eyes, photos are credited, chapter notes bundled at the end, very extensive Bibliography, thorough but visually crowded Index. When you're done reading you'll be sorry it's over.

Full review at SpeedReaders.info. Copyright 2011, Sabu Advani.