Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David McCullough explores the lives, trials, and ultimate triumph of aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright in his latest book, telling a great American story as it has never before been told.

The Dayton, Ohio, brothers endured four years of contrary weather, accidents, disappointment, and public indifference and ridicule before their Wright Flyer became the first mechanically powered, heavier-than-air machine to sustain controlled flight with a pilot aboard in December 1903. McCullough chronicles not only the technological achievements but also Orville’s and Wilbur’s human side – including their close relationship with sister Katharine, who would go on to marry Kansas City Star editor Henry Joseph Haskell.

McCullough, who earned Pulitzers for his biographies of Harry S. Truman and John Adams and National Book Awards for two other works, The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback, selects the Kansas City Public Library for this special engagement: a discussion of the new book and its two extraordinary subjects.

Co-presented by the Truman Library Institute.