Wings of Madness

Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight

Contributors

By Paul Hoffman

Formats and Prices

Price

$30.00

Price

$39.00 CAD

Format

Hardcover

Format:

Hardcover $30.00 $39.00 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around June 11, 2003. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

On the eve of the centennial of the Wright brothers’ historic flights at Kitty Hawk, a new generation will learn about the other man who was once hailed worldwide as the conqueror of the air–Alberto Santos-Dumont. Because the Wright brothers worked in secrecy, word of their first flights had not reached Europe when Santos-Dumont took to the skies in 1906. The dashing, impeccably dressed inventor entertained Paris with his airborne antics–barhopping in a little dirigible that he tied to lampposts, circling above crowds around the Eiffel Tower, and crashing into rooftops. A man celebrated, even pursued by the press in Paris, London, and New York, Santos-Dumont dined regularly with the Cartiers, the Rothschilds, and the Roosevelts. But beneath his lively public exterior, Santos-Dumont was a frenzied genius tortured by the weight of his own creation.Wings of Madness chronicles the science and history of early aviation and offers a fascinating glimpse into the mind of an extraordinary and tormented man, vividly depicting the sights and sounds of turn-of-the-century Paris. It is a book that will do for aviation what The Man Who Loved Only Numbers did for mathematics.

Genre:

On Sale
Jun 11, 2003
Page Count
380 pages
Publisher
Hachette Books
ISBN-13
9780786866595

Paul Hoffman

About the Author

Paul Hoffman was president of Encyclopedia Britannica and editor-in-chief of Discover. and is the author of The Man Who Loved Only Numbers and The Wings of Madness. He is the winner of the first National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, and his work has appeared in the New Yorker, Time, and Atlantic Monthly. He lives in Woodstock, NY.

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