Content area
Full Text
Williams, Julie Hedgepeth. Wings of Opportunity: The Wright Brothers in Montgomery, Alabama, 1910. Montgomery, Ala.: NewSouth, 2010. 168 pp. $19.95.
Imagine a crisp spring evening with a full moon. Two bold young men push a flying machine out of the shed, intending to break Orville Wright's primary rule - no hotdog stunts. Most folks in Montgomery are asleep. A reporter from the Montgomery Advertiser follows the lads out to the field where they will set an aviation record and, thus, increase national awareness of Alabama's capital. Wright's protégés risk rheir lives to fly in the dark, an aviation milestone that will ensure their place in history, as they soar across the silver moon at midnight in a canvass and sticks contraption with two seats on the wings.
Julie Hedgepeth Williams creates vivid scenes in her history of an encounter between innovation and public relations that changed the world. Although the Wright Brothers stayed only a few months, their accomplishments in Montgomery elevated both aviation and the damaged image of the former capital of the Confederacy.
The author analyzes the first civilian flying school, its teachers, its "yearbook," its graduates, and its legacy as she highlights the...