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The Flyers: In Search of Wilbur & Orville Wright (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "I KNOW WHERE ALL THE BODIES ARE BURIED," JIM SANDEGREN tells me, laughing, as we walk up one of the cemetery roads..." (more)
Key Phrases: Kitty Hawk, Fort Myer, New York (more...)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Adams, cohost of NPR's All Things Considered and author of Piano Lessons, sets out to learn about the Wright Brothers, their family and why they loved to fly so much. Adams visits all the spots important to the brothers, from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where they flew gliders, to France; Dayton, Ohio; and New York. The most appealing part of the book is the look at the close relationship between Orville, Wilbur and their sister Katherine. Following the death of their mother, the three were devoted to one another and planned on living together. In fact, after Wilbur's death, when Katherine announced her plans to marry, at age 50, Orville was devastated and ended up not seeing his sister until she was on her deathbed a few years later. Adams uses letters and diaries to describe the lives of the Wrights; some of these details are not widely included in other books that focus on their inventions and accomplishments. Adams intersperses his personal musings as he re-creates the travels of the Wrights: "Wilbur's Arlington Hotel is gone, replaced by a three-story condominium, the La Casita. I put up at the Comfort Inn, out at the bypass. I had plans for my own boat trip, leaving at first light." In the end, he's a personable guide into the Wright Brothers' world, offering a refreshing look at these aviation pioneers.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist

This book is more than just another history of the Wright Brothers' first flight. Adams, host of National Public Radio's All Things Considered, retraced Wilbur Wright's first trip--by train and boat--to North Carolina's Outer Banks in 1900 and stopped by the Wright family plot in Woodland Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio. Adams visited the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio that had its beginnings as the Huffman Prairie Flying Field. Orville had left a sketch of the field from 1904, designed by the two brothers and their mechanic, Charlie Taylor. Adams also visited the horseracing track in France where the Wright Flyer set records as the European aviation community watched. The author toured Governors Island in New York Harbor, the spot where Wilbur made a 20-mile, roundtrip up the Hudson River, and the parade grounds of Fort Myer, Virginia, where Orville conducted test flights for the U.S. Army. Much of Adams' research was done at the Library of Congress and the archives of Dayton's Wright State University, where he read thousands of letters and examined photo albums, microfilm, notebooks, and ledgers--and even Orville's lifelong collection of business and calling cards left by visitors. This is the closest look yet at the Wright family, including the troubled relationship between Orville and his sister, Katharine. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Crown; First Edition, First Printing edition (October 7, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1400049121
  • ISBN-13: 978-1400049127
  • Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #952,849 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

Noah Adams
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
I KNOW WHERE ALL THE BODIES ARE BURIED," JIM SANDEGREN tells me, laughing, as we walk up one of the cemetery roads. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Kitty Hawk, Fort Myer, New York, Wilbur Wright, Orville Wright, Outer Banks, Huffman Prairie, North Carolina, Hawthorn Hill, Kansas City, Governors Island, Milton Wright, World War, Charlie Taylor, Kill Devil Hills, United States, Wright Flyer, Elizabeth City, Glenn Curtiss, Woodland Cemetery, Albemarle Sound, Ken Hyde, Signal Corps, David Stick, Grant's Tomb
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3.5 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars a journey of discovery, November 28, 2003
By Rick Beyer "Rick Beyer" (Lexington, MA United States) - See all my reviews
Noah Adams took a year off from NPR and went in search of the Wright Brothers. He sought out the threads of their story in locations from Dayton Ohio to Paris France, as well as deep inside the many long letters that Orville, Wilbur, their father Milton and their sister Kate shared over the years. The result is a fresh telling of the Wright story that is well worth reading.

Adams' book caught my eye because I have been on my own Wright Brothers quest the last two years, producing a documentary for The History Channel. In reading his book I discovered we had unknowingly crossed paths twice. Once in October 2002 on the dunes of Jockey's Ridge state park, a few miles south of Kitty Hawk, watching military pilots try their hand flying the Wright Brothers 1902 glider, and once at the annual air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Having done a substantial amount of research into the Wrights' story, I wondered if I would learn anything new in this book, and was delighted to find that I did. No other book that I've seen details Wilbur Wright's first encounter with alphabet soup at a hotel dining room in France in 1908, which is a wonderful moment. Other little known nuggets also come to light here. The Wrights' sense of humor, hidden from the world and saved only for family and close friends, is also write large on these pages, which helps us see past the starched suits and pinched faces and come face to face with the real men.

Other parts of the story that I was familiar with were told with caring and detail that made them seem brand new. One exquisitely sad chapter deals in detail with Will and Orv's sister Kate. She and Orville were as close as two people could be, and came to rely heavily on each other after Wilbur's death. But when Kate fell in love in her 50's with an old college friend, recently widowed, and decided to marry him, Orville cut her off. He didn't attend the wedding, he returned letters, and never spoke to her again before she died of pneumonia two years later. Adams tells the story through Kate's letters, and the pain is palpable.

But it is Adams' own explorations that what really set the book apart, as he visits the dirt racecourse in Le Mans where Wilbur Wright astonished the world with his first flight, charters a boat to Kitty Hawk the same way Wilbur Wright did, or examines the original glass negative of that famous picture of the first flight.

Listeners to NPR are familiar with Adams' folksy style. You meet the people he does, be they curators, taxi drivers, whoever. He occasionally stumbles, rambling on too long about a moth collector at Huffman Prairie, or a stunt pilot flying at Oshkosh. But he hits far more often than he misses. His observations and his musings, and his weaving of modern day people and happenings into the story make this book unique among the many Wright books that have come out this year. You can learn the history well you enjoy the ride. I highly recommend it.

One other note: I downloaded the audio version of this book, something I had never done before, and it worked quite well. I was going to burn it to CD, but it would have required multiple CDs, so I just listened to it off my laptop, which was great.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars "Flyers" lifts off the page, November 5, 2003
By A Customer
I happened on this book at a local shop just after it was released. Having read the superb biography of the Wrights, "The Bishops Boys" by Tom Crouch, I can recommend this book as an excellent companion piece. Noah Adams' narrative has an immediacy to it, and he brings the Wrights alive as only a storyteller can. As he travels around the country, and the world, tracing the footsteps of the Wright brothers and sister, offering observation and insight, Adams brings us face to face with their - and our - history. With the appproaching "centennial of flight", this would make a very appropriate book gift, especially for the holidays.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and highly readable popular history, June 29, 2009
This is a very well-written and well-told story of the human side of the Wright brothers and their pioneering role in aviation. It's not intended as an in-depth biography but rather a first-person, experiential step back in time (from the perspective of today and the then-upcoming 100th anniversary of the first flight at Kitty Hawk) to explore what it would have been like to be with the Wright brothers as they developed their inventions and their subsequent aviation careers.

The author, Noah Adams, goes to all the important sites affiliated with the Wright brothers' development of controlled flight and their later quest for recognition and profit. He interweaves his impressions of the locations where the Wright brothers lived and worked with snippets from the private writings of their father and sister to paint an effective and intimate portrait of the relationships within the Wright family. His narrative conveys the excitement and novelty of the early days of powered flight that leaves the reader with a solid understanding of the Wright brothers' tremendous accomplishments. The wonderful photographs at the beginning of each chapter are used creatively not only to provide a visual reference but also to anchor the storyline in a particularly informative yet subtle manner.

I found this to be a highly readable, well-researched, and enjoyable book, and I would recommend it to anyone who would like a taste of the early days of aviation and the intimate life of its two most important pioneers. For those reading some of the reviews here on Amazon, the ones that are most critical seem to miss the point of this book and the first-person nature of its perspective.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Into the wind

Wilbur and Orville Wright from Dayton, Ohio translated their bicycle-shop experience into a winning stake in the quest for powered flight. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Linda Bulger

2.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly
boring. Even if you're fascinated by the Wright brothers. That's because the author writes less about the Wrights (who are interesting) than about himself (unbelievably dull)... Read more
Published 16 months ago by kailu

5.0 out of 5 stars Noah Adams Has Captured the Essence
I lived in Dayton, Ohio, for three years during the late 1960s. I appreciate the nostalgia and reverence Noah Adams captures in his description of Dayton and of the Wright... Read more
Published on May 29, 2006 by Larry Rochelle

2.0 out of 5 stars Confused Bio
This biography on the Wrights is a confused mess. Adams tells the story by visitng locations where the Wrights made history, but during these travels we learn more about his... Read more
Published on December 25, 2004 by Bryan Jacobs

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down!
This is a great little book. You follow along as Adams revisits many of the places where the Wright Brothers went. Read more
Published on June 25, 2004 by Charles Hall

3.0 out of 5 stars Still Searching
The problem with Noah Adams's book is an inability to decide what it wants to be. A Wright Brothers biography? No. A personal memoir? Not really. Read more
Published on June 19, 2004 by James Carragher

1.0 out of 5 stars wish it was more about the wrights
Listened to part of this book on tape (did not read book). Quit after an hour because he talked about his own recent travel to WHERE the Wrights were born, buried etc. Read more
Published on November 14, 2003

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