To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight

Written by James Tobin

Narrated by Boyd Gaines

James Tobin, award-winning author of Ernie Pyle's War and The Man He Became, has penned the definitive account of the inspiring and impassioned race between the Wright brothers and their primary rival Samuel Langley across ten years and two continents to conquer the air.

For years, Wilbur Wright and his younger brother, Orville, experimented in obscurity, supported only by their exceptional family. Meanwhile, the world watched as Samuel Langley, armed with a contract from the US War Department and all the resources of the Smithsonian Institution, sought to create the first manned flying machine. But while Langley saw flight as a problem of power, the Wrights saw a problem of balance. Thus their machines took two very different paths—Langley’s toward oblivion, the Wrights’ toward the heavens—though not before facing countless other obstacles. With a historian’s accuracy and a novelist’s eye, Tobin has captured an extraordinary moment in history. To Conquer the Air is itself a heroic achievement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Apr 1, 2003
• ISBN: 9780743549288

James Tobin

James Tobin won the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography for Ernie Pyle’s War and the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight. Educated at the University of Michigan, where he earned a PhD in history, he teaches narrative nonfiction in the Department of Media, Journalism, and Film at Miami University in Oxford, OH.

Reviews for To Conquer the Air

[Thomas Cook · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Really enjoyed it, nice follow up to Mcculloughs masterpiece on the wrights.

[jstamp26 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tobin has created a tremendously engaging work detailing the pursuit of manned flight. The author takes a sympathetic view of the Wright brothers and yet maintains an admirable degree of objectivity concerning the other major players as well. The result is a story of conflicting personalities, attitudes, ideas, and even nations. The Wrights labored patiently in the midst of persistent skepticism and were rewarded with the glory that they deserved.

[amerynth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

James Tobin's "To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight" tells the story of three efforts (mainly) to prove that man could take to the skies. Its major focus is on the success of the Wilbur and Orville Wright, who were the first to successfully fly an airplane on the fields at Kitty Hawk, N.C. It also features the stories of Samuel Langley and Alexander Graham Bell, who approached the problem of flight with different (and less successful) ideas.Overall, I found the book to be very comprehensive and well written. It contains lots of little insights into the personalities and differing attitudes of the major players in the "Great Race for Flight." My only real complaint is that sometimes there was a little too much information so the story started to drag a little bit. Definitely a great book for someone interested in the history of flight.... not as interesting for the casual reader though.

[kcslade · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Decent history of the Wright Brothers and their quest to invent a flying machine.