Editor’s note: If you like history, spiced up by great writing, this is a can’t miss. It reads like a novel and yet I learned very interesting detail about man’s early quest to fly and also about a very interesting family. I was also a bit stunned to learn about the business and financial outcomes of their ventures.

Favorite excerpt: “[the flying machine] was the kind of horse that men had to learn to manage in order to fly and there were two ways: One is to get on him and learn by actual practice how each motion and trick may be best met; the other is to sit on a fence and watch the beast a while, and then retire to the house and at leisure figure out the best way over overcoming his jumps and kicks. The latter system is the safest, but the former, on the whole, turns out the larger portion of good riders”.