MARC record from Internet Archive

LEADER: 06626cam 22007934a 4500
001 ocm51304121
003 OCoLC
005 20100928120159.0
008 021219s2003 nyuaf b 001 0beng
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050 00 $aTL540.W7$bT63 2003
082 00 $a629.13/0092/273$221
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100 1 $aTobin, James,$d1956-
245 10 $aTo conquer the air :$bthe Wright Brothers and the great race for flight /$cJames Tobin.
260 $aNew York :$bFree Press,$cc2003.
300 $aix, 433 p., [16] p. of plates :$bill. ;$c24 cm.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505 0 $aPrologue: Decoration Day, 1899 -- "Edge of wonder" -- "Slight possibility" -- "Some practical experiments" -- "Truth and error intimately mixed" -- "Possibility of exactness" -- "Thousand glides" -- "Our turn to throw" -- Interlude -- "What hath God wrought?" -- "Clean air of the heavens" -- "Flying machine at anchor" -- "World of trouble" -- "Light on glory's plume" -- "Greatest courage and achievements" -- Epilogue -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Note on sources -- Index.
520 $a"For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life." So wrote a quiet young Ohioan in 1900, one in an ancient line of men who had wanted to fly, men who wanted it passionately, fecklessly, hopelessly. But now, at the turn of the twentieth century, Wilbur Wright and a scattered handful of other adventurers conceived a conviction that the dream lay at last within reach, and in a headlong race across ten years and two continents, they competed to conquer the air. James Tobin, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography, has at last given this inspiring story its definitive telling. For years Wright and his younger brother, Orville, experimented in utter obscurity, supported only by their exceptional family. Meanwhile, the world watched as the imperious Samuel Langley, armed with a rich contract from the U.S. War Department and all the resources of the Smithsonian Institution, sought to scale up his unmanned models to create the first manned flying machine. But while Langley became obsessed with flight as a problem of power, the Wrights grappled with it as a problem of balance. Thus their machines took two very different paths, his toward oblivion, theirs toward the heavens. As Tobin relates, the Wrights' 1903 triumph at Kitty Hawk, however hallowed in American lore, was ill-reported and disbelieved. So, while the two brothers struggled to transform their delicate contraption into a practical airplane, others moved to overtake them as the leading pioneers of flight. In France, rivals scoffed at the Wrights even as they rushed to imitate them. At home, the great inventor Alexander Graham Bell seized the fallen banner of his friend Langley and thrust it into the hands of a circle of young daredevils, urging them "to get into the air." From this group emerged the motorcyclist Glenn Curtiss, "fastest man in the world," whose aerial challenge to Wilbur Wright culminated in an unforgettable showdown over New York harbor. To Conquer the Air is a hero's tale of overcoming obstacles within and without that plumbs the depths of creativity and character. With a historian's accuracy and a novelist's eye, Tobin has captured the interplay of remarkable personalities at an extraordinary moment in our history, in the centennial year of human flight. To Conquer the Air is itself a heroic achievement. An award-winning historian offers a gripping narrative of the fierce competition on the centennial of the Wright Brothers' achievement.
530 $aAlso issued online.
600 10 $aWright, Orville,$d1871-1948.
600 10 $aWright, Wilbur,$d1867-1912.
650 0 $aAeronautics$zUnited States$xHistory.
650 0 $aFlight$xHistory$y20th century.
650 0 $aWright Flyer (Airplane)
650 17 $aLuchtvaart.$2gtt
650 17 $aBiografieën (vorm)$2gtt
600 17 $aWright, Orville$2swd
600 17 $aWright, Wilbur (Ingenieur)$2swd
650 07 $aMotorflug$2swd
650 07 $aGeschichte$2swd
776 08 $iOnline version:$aTobin, James, 1956-$tTo conquer the air.$dNew York : Free Press, c2003$w(OCoLC)606935516
856 42 $3Contributor biographical information$uhttp://www.loc.gov/catdir/bios/simon051/2002044778.html
856 42 $3Publisher description$uhttp://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/simon041/2002044778.html
856 41 $3Table of contents only$uhttp://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy037/2002044778.html
856 41 $3Sample text$uhttp://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0641/2002044778-s.html
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