From the author of the acclaimed The Man Who Loved Only Numbers comes a book that is at once the biography of an eccentric Brazilian aviator and the story of the thrilling early days of flight.
On the eve of the centennial of the Wright brothers' historic flights at Kitty Hawk, aContinue
From the author of the acclaimed The Man Who Loved Only Numbers comes a book that is at once the biography of an eccentric Brazilian aviator and the story of the thrilling early days of flight.
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.
