Read Fred Howard’s Wilbur and Orville (1987) for the biography. Read this for the pictures.
A coffee-table chronicle of the Wright brothers that contains hundreds of superb photographs and illustrations accompanied by a serviceable text.
The brothers did not produce the first great invention of the 20th century because they were more ingenious or industrious than their rivals. By the 1890s, enthusiasts were flying man-carrying gliders. Engines existed that could yank these contraptions into the air, and plenty of inventors were working on powered flight. Some may have even succeeded for a few seconds. The great achievement of the Wright brothers, though, was understanding the problem. The barrier to powered flight wasn’t getting off the ground but control once the flier was in the air. The brothers designed and flew gliders for years until they found the mechanisms (which they patented). When they built their first powered machine, it flew on the first attempt in 1903. Within two years others were still crashing while the brothers were flying for half an hour, executing intricate loops and turns. Strangely, this produced only modest publicity and little interest from the US government. It was a French syndicate who broke the ice in 1908 by offering to buy French rights to a practical machine. Wilbur’s demonstration flights in France flabbergasted observers, making him a media darling throughout Europe. American idolatry soon followed. Others then contributed important advances. By 1910, the brothers were preoccupied with the inevitable follow-up to all breakthrough inventions: patent suits and priority disputes. Yet they prospered, and their fame remains unchallenged. Cal Tech professor of mechanical engineering Culick and aviation writer Dunmore (Bomb Run, not reviewed) have collected over 200 photographs and illustrations, a wonderful treasure of early aviation history. The text is at its best explaining the technical problems facing early aviators.
Read Fred Howard’s Wilbur and Orville (1987) for the biography. Read this for the pictures.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7868-6686-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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