As I sit here watching the early missle/air war against Baghdad in March, 2003, I want to contact the news broadcasters to give them information that I learned from this book.

I read this book 20 years ago from the library and have wanted to re-read it ever since. (I'm going to order a copy today.)

Well written. Very informative. Highly recommended.

That being said, the book is fascinating, even if it only covers through 1862. Starting with a brief history of ballooning and its adoption by various military leaders during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, Hayden outlines the skepticism of U.S. generals during the Seminole Wars and the Mexican War and how they delayed the adoption of military balloons. Moving into the bulk of the book, Hayden builds on these earlier hesitancies to show how slow Union generals were to form a balloon corps and the difficulties Lowe, LaMountain and others faced in getting the army understand the value and difficulties of using balloons on the battlefield.

A great joy in the book are the extensive footnotes. Only a handful of pages lack them and Haydon uses the notes to provide additional information, context, and recollections, as well as sources. Haydon's love of detail is not constrained to the notes, however; he gives exacting details about the cost, materials, and staffing of the balloon corps, based upon archival records and receipts. It is a wonderful look at a little-known aspect of the Civil War and a good study of how reluctant military leaders could be to adopt/understand new technologies.

Peter L. Jakab, et al. relates the story of how the Wright Brothers did it. More than that, they show us WHY they succeeded where so many others failed. From the moment they decide to build a flying machine to their historic first flight, we follow how the the Wright Brothers's identified the tecnical challenges that needed to be addressed, and how they systematically solved them one after another.

You will learn why the Wright Brothers' background in bicycle helped understand the critical problem of stability, how they carried systematic experiments and how they were conducted to reject widely accepted data in favor of their own as their expertise grew.

The authors' objective is to shed some light on the process of invention and they definitely succeed in doing so. In addition, if you ever wondered why do planes fly at all, you will learn it there with just the right amount of mathematical equations.

So why not give it five stars? Just because there are some unnecessary repetitions on the skills and unique approaches of the Brothers, I would give it 4.5 stars if it was possible.

Overall, a very well documented, interesting, and instructive read. I highly recomment it.

When it focuses on the facts, the book is well written. But it is filled with unnecessary repetition and generalizations aimed at supporting the central theme of the book -- that the Wrights used the scientific method to solve the problem of powered flight. That may very well be true, but there are more persuasive ways to make a point. In fact, the introductory and closing material in each chapter bogs down the text to such an extent that it detracts from the fascinating subject. That's why this book is 80 percent fascinating, 20 percent repetitive stuff.

First, it explains how they started with an idea that was somehow missed by many of the other pioneers: flying experience is vitally important. This was combined with another idea: that airplanes were basically the same whether powered or gliders. To those who have studied aeronautics to any extent, this is not surprising, but many others seemed to be of the idea that powered airplanes and gliders were completely different beasts. Thus, while others were building bigger, more powerful, and more expensive machines, the Wrights were experimenting with actually flying gliders, to learn how to fly them.

This had two good results: (1) they actually learned how to fly, so that when they built the final plane they knew how to fly without crashing the first time a gust of wind came up; (2) not having that engine to pull them through the air and having to depend on gliding, they discovered one of the most important facts of all flight: lift-to-drag ratio. (This means how much drag a wing generates for a given amount of lift.) Low L/D meant their glider didn't go very far; thus, to get longer glider flights, they HAD to figure out a way to increase L/D.

At this point, the engineering process kicked in, and they realized they didn't have the foggiest notion of how to increase L/D. Thus, they realized they had to do lots of experiments with airfoils to see which had the highest L/D: the wind tunnel was born (or at least weaned). The book provides two dramatic pictures of two of their gliders: the angle of the ropes holding it down (plus the angle of attack of the wings) tells the entire story of their successful L/D increase (high-angle ropes=high L/D, low-angle=low L/D).

In short, this book tells this entire fascinating story, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, though it has been a few years. Hmmm ... I need to take a trip down to the basement and re-read it.

While most of the information presented in this book can be found in greater detail in other books, this book would be a nice addition to any collection of space flight or for the novice space flight reader who wants to learn a great deal about the space program.

Readers already familiar with the history of manned spaceflight and will find few surprises in book--but it was evidently not Crouch's intention to break new interpretive ground. His goal was, evidently, to provide a concise introduction to a sprawling subject. He has succeeded admirably, and even for experts the result is well worth owning--if only for lending out to inquisitive friends.

Despite the somewhat odd focusing on Wilbur's and Orville's father, this book gives a good account of the lives of two brothers who epitomized what we Americans have always liked to believe about ourselves: that we are imaginative, clever, industrious, persistent, tenacious, equal to any challenge. Certainly that description can't fit all of us; but certainly it did fit these two national heroes.