To Conquer the Air
The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight
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Narrated by:
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Boyd Gaines
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By:
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James Tobin
About this listen
So wrote a quiet young Ohioan in 1900, one in an ancient line of men who had wanted to fly - wanted it passionately, fecklessly, hopelessly. But now, at the turn of the 20th 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 10 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. 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 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.
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.
©2003 James Tobin (P)2003 Simon & Schuster Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds.
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A Rich Read!
- By D on 09-18-03
By: Erik Larson
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One Summer
- America, 1927
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most admired nonfiction writers of our time retells the story of one truly fabulous year in the life of his native country - a fascinating and gripping narrative featuring such outsized American heroes as Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, and yes Herbert Hoover, and a gallery of criminals (Al Capone), eccentrics (Shipwreck Kelly), and close-mouthed politicians (Calvin Coolidge). It was the year Americans attempted and accomplished outsized things and came of age in a big, brawling manner. What a country. What a summer. And what a writer to bring it all so vividly alive.
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Why 1927?
- By Mark on 10-18-13
By: Bill Bryson
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I Invented the Modern Age
- The Rise of Henry Ford and the Most Important Car Ever Made
- By: Richard Snow
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In many ways, Henry Ford's story is well-known; in many more ways, it is not. Richard Snow masterfully weaves together a fascinating narrative of Ford's rise to fame through his greatest invention, the Model T. A highly pleasurable listen, filled with scenes and incidents from Ford's life, I Invented the Modern Age shows Richard Snow at the height of his powers as a popular historian and reclaims from history Henry Ford, the remarkable man who, indeed, invented the modern world as we know it.
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A Complicated Man
- By Jean on 11-23-13
By: Richard Snow
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Falling Upwards
- How We Took to the Air
- By: Richard Holmes
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Falling Upwards tells the story of the enigmatic group of men and women who first risked their lives to take to the air and so discovered a new dimension of human experience. Why they did it, what their contemporaries thought of them, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet in wholly unexpected ways is its subject.
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A Significant Factual-Interpretative Error
- By William P. Mitchell on 04-01-20
By: Richard Holmes
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First Man
- The Life of Neil A. Armstrong
- By: James R. Hansen
- Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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When Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon’s surface in 1969, the first man on the Moon became a legend. In First Man, author James R. Hansen explores the life of Neil Armstrong. Based on over 50 hours of interviews with the intensely private Armstrong, who also gave Hansen exclusive access to private documents and family sources, this "magnificent panorama of the second half of the American twentieth century" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) is an unparalleled biography of an American icon.
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Not really 'unabridged'
- By A Reader on 06-06-18
By: James R. Hansen
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American Eclipse
- A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World
- By: David Baron
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In the scorching summer of 1878, with the Gilded Age in its infancy, three tenacious and brilliant scientists raced to Wyoming and Colorado to observe a rare total solar eclipse. One sought to discover a new planet. Another - an adventuresome female astronomer - fought to prove that science was not anathema to femininity. And a young megalomaniacal inventor, with the tabloid press fast on his heels, sought to test his scientific bona fides and light the world through his revelations.
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Just OK.
- By Melanie A Hwalek on 09-18-17
By: David Baron
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Tuxedo Park
- A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II
- By: Jennet Conant
- Narrated by: John Kroft
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In the late 1930s, legendary financier, philanthropist, and society figure Alfred Lee Loomis gathered the most visionary scientific minds of the 20th century at his state-of-the-art laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York. He established a top-secret defense laboratory at MIT and personally bankrolled pioneering research into new, high-powered radar detection systems that helped defeat the German Air Force and U-boats. With Ernest Lawrence, he pushed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fund research in nuclear fission, which led to the development of the atomic bomb.
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Fantastic book, weak technical execution
- By Paul on 10-13-18
By: Jennet Conant
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Enduring Courage
- Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker and the Dawn of the Age of Speed
- By: John F. Ross
- Narrated by: Edward Herrmann
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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At the turn of the twentieth century two new technologies—the car and airplane—took the nation's imagination by storm as they burst, like comets, into American life. The brave souls that leaped into these dangerous contraptions and pushed them to unexplored extremes became new American heroes: the race car driver and the flying ace. No individual did more to create and intensify these raw new roles than the tall, gangly Eddie Rickenbacker, who defied death over and over with such courage and pluck that a generation of Americans came to know his face better than the president's.
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A true ace, and an example for us all.
- By Gotta Tellya on 08-20-14
By: John F. Ross
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Thunderstruck
- By: Erik Larson
- Narrated by: Bob Balaban
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men: Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication. Their lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.
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Reader cannot read
- By Bob on 12-08-07
By: Erik Larson
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The Electric War
- Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Light the World
- By: Mike Winchell
- Narrated by: Greg Tremblay
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In the mid- to late-19th century, a burgeoning science called electricity promised to shine new light on a rousing nation. Inventive and ambitious minds were hard at work. Soon that spark was fanned, and a war was under way to be the first to light - and run - the world with electricity. Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of direct current (DC), engaged in a brutal battle with Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, the inventors of alternating current (AC). There would be no ties in this race - only a winner and a loser - and the prize was a nationwide monopoly in electric current.
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Very well written!
- By Amanda McCoy on 07-17-19
By: Mike Winchell
What listeners say about To Conquer the Air
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Jere
- 05-30-03
A great story
To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight, is an insightful, well-researched narrative of the development of heavier-than-air flight by James Towbin. This novel is essentially the story of the Wright brothers and their competition, told in chronological order with scenes switching back and forth between the Wrights and other aviation pioneers to show the tension of the competition in the race to fly. The irony involved creates a surprising amount of suspense for what is essentially a historical novel. Wilbur Wright?s use of the scientific method to develop models and prototypes is impressive. This began with aerodynamic design and control of gliders with the brothers concentrating on flight control and design, while others were more concerned with design and power. Especially insightful was their development of a primitive wind tunnel that they used to test and modify their designs. The family story is included to add to realism to the description of what these pioneers were experiencing at a time when they were making history. The narrator, Boyd Gaines, does a fine job reading the abridged version of the book, adroitly capturing the foreign and regional accents. I was so thoroughly taken with the story that I never lost interest during the six hours and ten minutes duration of the program. This four-star novel lets one sit back, relax, and experience an important time in American history.
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Overall
- RockyToTheMoon
- 05-27-05
The TRUE story
A cunning and accurate account on the events and life of the early years of flight. This book encompasses the factors of the how the first flights came to be, in a clear easy to listen story. In addition to the straight facts, the author also includes external influences such as friendships, family and fate that adds marvelous insight!
The speaker has clear tone, the audio quality is excellent and the writing style makes it difficult to stop. While the history of flight does stretch into modern times, this is only the primal years, during the infancy and the quest for fame.
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