Walt Boyne was a career Air Force pilot with 5,000 flying hours. He
went on to become director of the Smithsonian's National Air and
Space Museum, founder of Air & Space magazine, and he is
widely-recognized as the world's foremost authority on aviation. He
has written thirty-six works of nonfiction and five novels on
aviation, and is one of the few writers to have been on the New York
Times' best seller list for .. both fiction and non-fiction.

He taps into his skills to explore the psychology of the Wright
brothers .. their family .. and their fierce circle of competitors in
the new book (1) : DAWN OVER KITTY HAWK: THE NOVEL
OF THE WRIGHT BROTHERS .

For years it seemed certain that Samuel Langley, Secretary of the
Smithsonian, would be the first to take to the skies in powered
flight. The French, who had flown the first balloon in 1783, were
determined that it would be a Frenchman who would fly first, and they
considered the Wright brothers of Dayton, Ohio to be liars not flyers,
unable to get off the ground with any aircraft of their own design.

Orville and Wilbur had to struggle against more than gravity--they had
to break the bonds of dominance that their father, Bishop Milton
Wright, exercised over them. To him they were just "the boys"
until well into their thirties, and his word was absolute law in the
tightly-knit Wright household. He would have preferred them to be
lawyers or teachers, and the Bishop watched with cynical detachment
as Orville and Wilbur went from kites to powered flight in their
famous Flyer in just four years.

On December 17, 1903, they signaled the dawn of aviation with their
four history making flights at Kitty Hawk, only to find that no one
cared in the least about their great invention. Even though they were
ten years ahead of all competition, they found that they could
not sell their aircraft to the U.S. government even as Alexander
Graham Bell and Louis Blériot, were plundering their ideas.

The Wright Brothers gave the gift of flight to mankind, changing the
world in ways even they never dreamed of. Walt Boyne's new book
tells for the first time ever the human side of the two brothers.

- Stephen Coonts : "A magnificent novel of the dawn of the aviation
age by the world's foremost aviation historian, DAWN OVER KITTY HAWK
dramatically exposes the humanity, conflicts and genius of the men who
gave us wings. This terrific historical novel is as captivating, and
as revealing, as Gore Vidal's Lincoln. You owe yourself this ride."

[From the "FIGHTER PILOT" email list]