Two-time Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner David McCullough here tells the surprising, profoundly American story of Wilbur and Orville Wright. On a December day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the brothers from Dayton, Ohio, launched the first powered, heavier-than-air flying machine. Though they had no more than a high school education, little money, and no wealthy or powerful connections, nothing stopped them in their determination to take to the air. McCullough focuses on the human side of the Wright Brothers' story—their skills and talents, their book-filled home, and the little-recognized contributions of their high-spirited, devoted sister Katharine.