First flight and how it happened

Most folks are pretty well aware of Orville and Wilbur Wright and the fact that they catapulted the world into flight.  Ohio license plates proclaim “The Birthplace of Aviation” and North Carolina plates proudly declaim “First in Flight.”  Everyone is familiar with the picture of Orville in flight with Wilbur cheering him on.  But who knows that Glenn Curtiss was nipping at their heels and perhaps even flew before they did?  How about Chanute and Otto Lilienthal?  And a number of others who contributed greatly to both the realities of flight and the misplaced theories that hampered progress.

 

The book “Birdmen, the Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies” reveals the massive effort by many people in Europe and the United States to solve the problem of putting men into the sky and making such an effort worthwhile.  Balloons and dirigibles are visited and examined, gliders tested, power plants built and, most importantly, patents sought and issued that affected the search to make men equal to birds.  Today aircraft are built whose wingspans are longer than the first flight by Orville Wright and yet the basic physics remain the same.

 

Here is a book that gathers together the many threads leading to flight and the men who used them to weave a fabric that today envelops the world in a skein of transworld air routes making the world smaller and more accessible with an ease that can only be called remarkable.

A review of the detective novel "Vengeance is Mine"

Writing a mystery novel that the author plans to expand into a series is a very extensive process in that characters have to be established, themes articulated, any running eccentricities carefully planned.  After all, one is laying a foundation that is proposed to support a continuing activity.  Is the protagonist going to have a foil or foils on whom some action is dependent, etc.  Think of Nero Wolfe and Archie.  Wolfe, while the solver of problems, had Archie who was the doer, the narrator.  But think how interconnected everyone was: when you pick up a Nero Wolfe novel you know exactly how each will act in solving the mystery together.  I am sure you can name a number of other pairings.

Vengeance is Mine is to be the first book in a series   Author Krebs introduces us to Benjamin Tucker, former ace investigative reporter, out of a job but enjoying the freedom to write a book.  We are presented with the earthy man, whose language is frequently salty and also awkward, given to putting his foot in his mouth, uninterested in clothing other than a Tee shirt and jeans, quite content to drive a broken down old car.  Fortunately he is happily married to Maggie Marshak who is the CEO and owner of Marshak’s Department Stores which allows him the wherewithal to pursue the bad guys.  Because of his years as an investigative reporter he has a number of friends on the police force and elsewhere, including a cigar smoking detective Lieutenant Netter.

A serial killer is loose, whose M.O. is to rape, kill and then taking the head of the young women for deposit elsewhere.   They all  have very similar physical characteristics and, in fact, they look a lot like Benjamin’s ex-wife!  To make matters worse witnesses have reported seeing Benjamin in places where he has not been.  To continue with the plot would be to unveil far too soon the twists and turns it takes.  Suffice it to say Benjamin has his hands full and is fortunate to have a loving wealthy wife.  It will be interesting to see what befalls Mr. Tucker in the next book