Buy this book on-line TOBIN, JAMES: : FIRST TO FLY: The Unlikely Triumph of Wilbur and Orville WrightLONDON.JOHN MURRAY (PUBLISHERS).2003. ISBN 0719557275.
UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,FINE+/FINE.No owner inscrptn and no price-clip to dw/dj.Bright, crisp,clean,glossy laminated, monochrome photographic illustrated dw/dj with red+black lettering to front and spine; with negligible shelf-wear or creasing to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present.Spine/backstrip ubiquitously sunned/faded.Top+fore-edges bright and clean; contents bright,tight,clean,solid and sound - pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners,appears unread - apart from my own collation.Bright,crisp,clean,sharp-cornered,publisher's original plain taupe cloth bds with bright,crisp,blocked gilt letters to spine/backstrip,and immaculate speckled taupe endpapers.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,viipp+1-430pp [paginated] includes contents list/table,a prologue,13 chapters+epilogue with an Interlude in the middle,16pp contemporary b/w photographs and auto+biographical photographs in 1 block, between pp216/17,further contemporary b/w photographs as chapter headpieces,further other b/w photographs inserted in text, acknowledgements,notes,a note on sources,an index; plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages,a dedication with b/w photograph repeated from front of dw/dj to its recto,illustrations credits with blank recto,after last paginated page,and following 8pp blanks.
One hundred years ago,as Wilbur right himself said,men 'by common consent adopted flight as the standard of impossibility'.
Intense,brilliant, determined,Wilbur and his brother Orville seized that challenge for their own.They were unknown bicycle makers from Ohio who went to a deserted Atlantic beach to devise the world's first aeroplane,and they faced keen competition from far more prominent men,equally driven to make history.
First came Samuel Langley,head of the Smithsonian Institution,the odds-on favourite to fly first.Under intense public scrutiny,his ponderous 'aerodrome' dropped into the icy Potomac River 'like a handful of mortar' just nine days before the Wright's unheralded first flight at Kitty Hawk.Yet the Wrights were so obscure they were all but ignored.So for six more years they fought for recognition - flying a full circle before the disbelieving French, competing against Alexander Graham Bell,and finally against motorcyclist Glenn Curtiss,the fastest man in the world'.In the final showdow with Curtiss in 1909,Wilbur Wright circled Manhattan above a million exstatic spectators. The brothers' place in history was assured.
Using his extraordinary research in the rich archives of aviation,James Tobin pulls readers back to a time when flight seemed simultaneously crazy and tantalizing,drawing them along the Wrights' twisting path of trial,error and breakthrough.'No one',Orville later remarked to Charles Lindbergh,'quite understands the spirit of those times.' This book will change that.
James Tobin won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his first book,'Ernie Pyle's War',and the J. Anthony Lukas Work- in-Progress Award from Harvard's Nieman Foundation and Columbia University for 'First to Fly.' Twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism, Tobin also holds a Ph.D in history.
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