The Wright Brothers

In the winter of 1903, on North Carolina's Outer Banks, Ohio brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first flight of a powered, heavier-than-air machine with a pilot aboard. David McCullough tells the human side of their story from the Wright Papers: diaries, notebooks and over a thousand family letters. He describes a childhood home without electricity or plumbing but full of books from their preacher father, and the risk of being killed each time they took off. Their sister, Katharine, emerges as more important to their work than generally understood. McCullough first took an interest in them while researching Americans in 19th-century Paris. It spent seven weeks on The New York Times best seller list.

Morgan Housel ranked it among the greatest stories of business and innovation ever told.