After being adopted by a woman in Dayton, Ohio, in 1903, orphaned twelve-year-old Tess Raney uncovers a plot to foil the Wright brothers' quest to be the first in flight, and takes great risks to make sure the plot fails.

The gripping account of the riot aboard the USS Kitty Hawk—and the first mutiny in U.S. Naval history In 1972, the United States was embroiled in an unpopular war in Vietnam, and the USS Kitty Hawk was headed to her station in the Gulf of Tonkin. Its five thousand men, cooped up for the longest at-sea tour of the war, rioted--or, as Troubled Water suggests, mutinied. Disturbingly, the lines were drawn racially, black against white. By the time order was restored, careers were in tatters. Although the incident became a turning point for race relations in the Navy, this story remained buried within U.S. Navy archives for decades. With action pulled straight from a high-seas thriller, Gregory A. Freeman uses eyewitness accounts and a careful and unprecedented examination of the navy's records to refute the official story of the incident, make a convincing case for the U.S. navy's first mutiny, and shed new light on this seminal event in American history.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' historic flight, Gutman delivers the fictional diary of a boy who helps the Wrights' build their flying machine, giving a new perspective to the historical events. Illustrations.

In combat with the men and women of today's U.S. Navy

No single human invention has transformed war more than the airplane—not even the atomic bomb. Even before the Wright Brothers’ first flight, predictions abounded of the devastating and terrible consequences this new invention would have as an engine of war. Soaring over the battlefield, the airplane became an unstoppable force that left no spot on earth safe from attack. Drawing on combat memoirs, letters, diaries, archival records, museum collections, and eyewitness accounts by the men who fought—and the men who developed the breakthrough inventions and concepts—acclaimed author Stephen Budiansky weaves a vivid and dramatic account of the airplane’s revolutionary transformation of modern warfare. On the web: http://www.budiansky.com/

On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the historic events at Kitty Hawk comes a splendidly illustrated account of the legendary 12-second flight that changed the world forever. 200+ photos & illustrations.

A look at the week in 1909 when the public gathered to witness an international airplane gathering that would change the world.

The captivating story of the titans, engineers, and pilots who raced to design a safe and lucrative passenger jet. In Jet Age, journalist Sam Howe Verhovek explores the advent of the first generation of jet airliners and the people who designed, built, and flew them. The path to jet travel was triumphal and amazingly rapid-less than fifty years after the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, Great Britain led the world with the first commercial jet plane service. Yet the pioneering British Comet was cursed with a tragic, mysterious flaw, and an upstart Seattle company put a new competitor in the sky: the Boeing 707 Jet Stratoliner. Jet Age vividly recreates the race between two nations, two global airlines, and two rival teams of brilliant engineers for bragging rights to the first jet service across the Atlantic Ocean in 1958. At the center of this story are great minds and courageous souls, including Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, who spearheaded the development of the Comet, even as two of his sons lost their lives flying earlier models of his aircraft; Sir Arnold Hall, the brilliant British aerodynamicist tasked with uncovering the Comet's fatal flaw; Bill Allen, Boeing's deceptively mild-mannered president; and Alvin "Tex" Johnston, Boeing's swashbuckling but supremely skilled test pilot. The extraordinary airplanes themselves emerge as characters in the drama. As the Comet and the Boeing 707 go head-to-head, flying twice as fast and high as the propeller planes that preceded them, the book captures the electrifying spirit of an era: the Jet Age. In the spirit of Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like It in the World, Verhovek's Jet Age offers a gorgeous rendering of an exciting age and fascinating technology that permanently changed our conception of distance and time, of a triumph of engineering and design, and of a company that took a huge gamble and won.

"The stirring story of the Wright brothers, plus a colorful supporting cast of high-flyers during the baby-step era of aviation, (is) entertainingly presented--warts and all."--"Kirkus Reviews."

Based on extraordinary research in the rich archives of American aviation, and written by one of the nation's most gifted narrative historians, "To Conquer the Air" brings to life one of history's most exciting contests.