Customer Reviews

Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight

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I picked up this book because Simon Winchester, in the New York Times, called Wings of Madness "brilliant" and an "unforgettably good book." Fortunately this atmospheric book (it evokes Paris at the end of the 19th century) lived up to its billing. This is an incredible story that deserves to be widely known. The Brazilian-born aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont was a tremendous aerial showman and a great humanitarian. He flew the first working dirigible around the tip of the Eiffel Tower in 1901 in front of biggest gathering of human beings--scientists, royalty, peasants to whom he promised money if he was successful--that had ever come together before. He went on to shrink the size of his airship so that he became the only person in history to have an aerial car. He tied it to the lampost in front of his Parisian apartment and flew every night to fancy restaurants like Maxim's and handed a rope from the balloon to the doormen to hold. He was so famous that Parisians imitated his dress--his Panama hat and the peculiar upturned shirt collars he wore to make himself seem taller. He believed that flying machines would bring about world peace and was emotionally destroyed when he saw his beloved inventions commandeered to kill people in World War I. This moving story ends with his mysterious death in circumstances that I don't want to give away.

Paul Hoffman has given us a biography of a man who seems to be relatively unknown here in the United States, although he is very well known in his native Brazil - Alberto Santos-Dumont.

I purchased this book because I had been exposed to Santos-Dumont while listening to James Tobin's To Conquer the Air book, and I wanted to understand more about this uncommon man.

Santos-Dumont was an innovator, and experimented primarily with lighter-than-air flying craft (such as attaching a motor to a hydrogen filled balloon). He eventually moved into heavier than air flying craft by inventing airplanes in the same genre as the Wright Brothers.

I found the book to be fast-paced and well-written. However, I had two minor concerns with the book - first, there was precious little introduction to some people that were important in the development of powered flight (i.e. Octave Chanute or Otto Lilienthal), despite the fact that they were mentioned numerous times during the book. The second concern I had was that one chapter seemed to have nothing more than a tangential connection to Santos-Dumont - a chapter devoted primarily to the use of aircraft in World War I.

Despite these two minor shortcomings, I highly recommend the book to all, since it truly allows us to explore a man that many of us know virtually nothing about, and his important work leading to powered flight.

Largely unknown outside of his native Brazil where he is nothing short of a national icon, Alberto Santos-Dumont was a pioneer in both lighter and heavier than air flight. Paul Hoffman tells Santos-Dumont's story from his earliest days as a child experimenting with paper balloons to his final sad days, broken by the fact that the world credited the Wright Brothers with the first flight of a plane and the use of that invention in war. A lot of research clearly went into Wings of Madness and Hoffman has done a marvelous job of reporting on a nearly forgotten chapter and pioneer of aviation history.

"Wings of Madness" is a great book, entertaining and informative. But it is much less a biography of Santos-Dumont than an account of the development of his flying machines. While the author provides detailed descriptions of Santos-Dumont's attempts to conquer the air, a fair amount of the history of manned flight, and even digresses about the development and the creators of military weapons (an interesting analysis by the way), we learn little about this extraordinary man and his activities outside the aviation realm. The years before his arrival in Paris and those after he built his last airplane are condensed in only two chapters.

The tale of Santos-Dumont's endeavors in Paris in the early 20th century is thrilling and admirably recounted by Paul Hoffman, but my thirst for learning more about Santos-Dumont's life was far from quenched.

This is an excellent book. First of all, I would probably recommend that "rkrb" read the book again. Santos Dumont is truly the "Father of Aviation", the main purpose of his discoveries was to provide a different way of transportation. Santos Dumont was focused on the advance of transportation to humans, and not to make money, he did not care about patente or anything like that. And Second, he did not kill himself after seen a airplane throwing bombs, there was never a bombing in Brazil. Santos Dumonts died due to health problems, and not because of mental problems.

Santos Dumonts was a great man, and not only to Brazilians, but to most of europeans, who just like Brazilians do not even know the wright brothers.

Over all, the book is fantastic.

Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian who emigrated to Paris at the age of 19, was perhaps the most celebrated man in France in the early 20th century. An effete eccentric with a genius for mechanical invention, Santos designed and regularly flew about Paris a series of airships. Most of these were powered, lighter-than-air vessels--hydrogen balloons to which he had attached a motor. But later in his career Santos also experimented with heavier-than-air flying machines--though not, to his great disappointment, before the Wright brothers had themselves achieved sustained flight. Among the aviator's airships was the world's first, and only, personal flying machine. Santos hopped around Paris in his "Baladeuse," or "Wanderer," alighting to order an aperitif at some sidewalk café, or dropping anchor at a club where, upon disembarking, he would hand the reins of his machine to a valet.

Paul Hoffman's seamless account of Santos-Dumont's life and career follows the aviator from his childhood on his father's coffee plantation to his sad death in 1932. Always somewhat tormented--Santos craved the adoration his pioneering exploits won for him--he ended his days apparently guilt-ridden over the lethal use to which airplanes--which were to his mind his own invention--were being put.

Hoffman's well-written book is fascinating for its invocation of a lost world. The author is to be applauded, too, for bringing the flamboyant, troubled Santos-Dumont once again to the attention of the public.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

I found this volume very entertaining. I have been in the aeronautics world for 50 years as a designer. As far as I could see the aeronautics was accurate, as were the people and places. I would have liked to see a little more attention to technical and personal detail, for example, size, weight and power of his aircraft and more about his life style - residence, servants, girl-boy-friends in that fascinating and gorgeous era. Glad to have the book, which is a worthy addition to my large aeronautica library.

This is not just a great biography of Santos-Dumont: Hoffman covers the history of balloon flight, the development of heavier-than-air airplane flight, and gives a nice historical perspective to the cultural, military, and social milieu of the time period. At the end of the book Hoffman provides an epilogue describing his his research and trips to Brazil where, even to this day, he received a warm welcome from Brazilians who would like to see the Santos-Dumont name mentioned in the same breath as the Wright Brothers. As Hoffman points out, Santos-Dumont missed being the first person to fly an airplane by a matter of months.

Santos-Dumont is portrayed as a Brazilian hero. He is also portrayed in three dimension. Santos-Dumont is never actually labeled as gay, but from Hoffman's descriptions he probably was. He shunned women's advances, decorated his living quarters in feminine design, even his appearance was slightly feminine. Journalists of the early 20th century liked to point out the contrast between Santos-Dumont's private and public persona, the contrast between his dainty personality and his macho, death-defying aerial experiments.

And don't forget, the thread weaving in and out of this whole story is that Santos-Dumont was mentally ill (hence the title of the book), and this unfortunate circumstance affected his life, too. Hoffman covers it all.

All in all, an engaging book about an obscure hero that I would probably never have known about about unless I moved to Brazil or read this book. Hoffman does an excellent job introducing the history of aviation through the eyes of an obscure Brazilian pioneer. With this book, Santos-Dumont only begins to get his due.

This is an excellent book on a most extraordinary inventor. Alberto Santos-Dumont was a man possessed of so much spirit and life - and so much genius - yet he is often overlooked in the history of flight in favor of the Wright Brothers. It seems as though he was born at the right time and under the right circumstances: He had a passion for aviation at a time when aviation was coming into it's own. He had the money to invest in his experimental machines, thanks to an inheritance. He was even the perfect size - a slight body frame was needed, as even a little extra weight could keep an early plane from lifting off.

As the book points out, Santos-Dumont was often times a study in contrasts. He was too shy to speak in public, but he could converse in more private settings with some of the greatest minds of his time. He could be a daredevil in the air, but he was also something of a recluse who enjoyed knitting and crocheting in the evenings alone.

He dreamed of everyone having their own small personal plane, rather than an automobile. And indeed, he did routinely use his flying "air car" to get around the City. I found this an amazing story. It is a fascinating introduction to Santos-Dumont, and also to the early history of aeronautics. Highly recommended.

The beauty of this book is that reading it, you will feel going back in time, participating in the life and adventures of Mr. Santos Dumont.

The author did a very good work in presenting not only history, but recreating the personality of Alberto Santos Dumont, a man that is totally focused on his inventions.

As I read the book I found many reasons to think that Mr. Steven Spielberg would have material for a very good film....Santos Dumont was quite a man, great imagination, and a truly courageous person.

Hoffman descriptions of the way inventors in the end of the XIX century risked their lives, to develop and use the new technologies of their time, provides a good framework to understand Santos Dumont behavior, risking his life on many experiments for the good of mankind.

My perspective as to where Santos Dumont should be placed in aviation history differs from most Brazilians. The airplane was the product of several inventions done by different people, each one contributing with a piece of the puzzle. There is room for the accomplishments of many inovators, like Otto Lillienthal, the Wright Brothers, Alberto Santos Dumont, Glenn Curtiss... and many others.

I think Hoffman gives a balanced view of aviation history and Santos Dumont accomplishments.

The book is worth reading and you will enjoy it.