T. C. Crouch and P. L. Jakab, *The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Airplane*, published by the Smithsonian and National Geographic, 2003.
This is good short introduction to the Wright brothers. It has some of the text from Crouch's book *The Bishop's Boys* plus a large number of photographs, as you would expect from the National Geographic. Many of the photos were taken by the Wrights themselves. They were excellent photographers. Like *The Bishop's Boys*, this book describes both their strengths and weaknesses, making them humans rather than cultural icons. It describes the way they dithered between 1905 and 1908. They nearly lost their advantage and did not get credit for their work. There is a haunting photo on p. 201, showing Orville and five young men. The caption says: "1910: To generate interest and business, the Wrights formed the Wright Flyer's Exhibition Team, shown here with Orville, who taught them to fly. They flew hundreds of exhibition flights, in spite of dangers: five of the original nine died in crashes of Wright airplanes." The role of happenstance in discovery is described on p. 15: Why Wilbur and Orville? How did these two modest small businessmen, working essentially alone, with little formal scientific or technical training, solve a complex and demanding problem that had defied better-known experimenters for centuries? It is perhaps one of the most interesting and important questions that can be asked regarding the invention of the airplane, and the most challenging to answer. Even the Wrights found it difficult to fully explain. Their diaries, letters, notebooks, and photographs revealed much of what they had done, and when. They were far less certain why they had done it, or how they had succeeded where so many others had failed. Wilbur was quick to dismiss the suggestion of his friend and correspondent Octave Chanute, a civil engineer and aeronautical experimenter, that raw genius might be the only explanation. *Do you not insist too strongly upon the single point of mental ability? To me it seems that a thousand other factors, each rather insignificant in itself, in the aggregate influence the event ten times more than mere mental ability or inventiveness.... If the wheels of time could be turned back six years, it is not at all probable that we would do again what we have done.... It was due to peculiar combinations of circumstances which might never occur again. * - Jed
