When I was very small, I was terrified every time I got onto an airplane: how could something so large possibly lift off the ground? Like most of the rest of us, though, I have gradually lost that fear- I simply look forward to the peanuts and trust in the engineeers, who are capable of designing things I could never possibly understand.
Reading John Hulls' book recaptured for me a sense of that wonder in the awesome feat of flying. Cody and the Wright brothers became more than just clever engineers, they were ingenious and daring pioneers who put their own lives on the line, rising hundreds of feet in the air supported by nothing more than bamboo and canvas. Cody's madcap adventures (cow hand, gold miner, variety show creator, Royal Aeronotical Society member, etc..) would make a wild story in any age, but are particularly resonant on the brink of the centennial of flight.
Hulls' book, though aimed at children, is informative and interesting for anyone fascinated by flying and the art of invention. Here is a simple story well told: the writing is clear and evocative, the characters come alive on the page, and once again history is a story worth telling.

Herding cattle up the Chisholm Trail from Texas to the Kansas railheads for shipment, young Samuel Cody became fascinated with the kites built by the chuck wagon's Chinese cook. The cook taught Cody kite building, starting the young cowhand on an odyssey that would take him to the Klondyke gold rush, then to the London stage with his KLONDYKE NUGGET, to full fellowship in the Royal Aeronatical Society and simultaneous birthing of the British aircraft industry.
The show's success, with roles for all his family, enabled Cody to indulge his kite habit on a grand scale, shown in the book's many fine photos. In 1901 they built the first practical man-carrying kite (woman-carrying, too--Lela shown in a photo aloft in formal hat and long dress, the first woman to fly in a heavier-than-air craft). The Royal Navy and then the Army bought Cody's kites, leading Cody to friendship with Colonel Capper, a British army officer ostensibly developing balloons for artillery observation but actually harboring visions of flight.
Cody and Capper collaborated in leading England into the age of flight. They buzzed Buckingham Palace and the War Office with their powered airship, then developed a hang-glider kite, finally "Army Airplane #1." Capper, who knew the Wrights, risked his career in supporting Cody but Cody went on to repeated triumphs, winning the first British military aircraft trials in 1912. The very next year Cody died tragically in an aircraft accident. The British army buried him with full military honours after a procession attended by 50,000 mourners representing every British army regiment.
Pilots who write about flying often evoke magic. Hulls writes with the clarity and humour of St. Exupery, Gann, Bach and the handful of pilots whose love of flight becomes literature. The chapter "Flyers and Liars" captures the risk of early flight and the achievements of the Wrights and Cody, quoting the 1906 NEW YORK HERALD: "Despite extravagant claims, history would show that by 1908 only five humans had acquired significant time flying heavier-than-air machines. Two were dead--Otto Lilienthal and Percy Pilcher, a Scots engineer who had studied with him, died in flying accidents." Cody and the Wrights were the only ones with more than brief seconds in heavier-than-air flight. In all the other claims, no one knew enough to ask the key question: "How did you learn to fly?"
Coupled with illustrator David Weitzman's illustrations of what it took to learn even to make a simple turn, Hulls depicts the Wrights' and Cody's bravery and brilliance as they risked death to master flight. Among Cody's inventions: the variable-pitch propeller, whose efficiency Cody tested by tethering his airplane to a tree at Farnborough (a flight-test locale that became, decades earlier, the British equivalent of Edwards AFB). When the tree died recently, the RAE honored Cody by recreating the tree in aluminium on its original site.
While directed at younger readers, "Rider" is a wonderful book for anyone of any age interested in great American characters such as Cody and the Wrights, a must for pilots or indeed anyone with a love of flight or who today flies safely in a modern airliner.