Wings of Madness; Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight

New York: Theia, 2003. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Format is approximately 6 inches by 8.5 inches. ix, [3], 369, [3] pages. Illustrations. Origins and Acknowledgments. Notes. What Santo-Dumont Wrote. What Santos-Dumont Read. What Santos-Dumont Made. Index. Paul Hoffman is the president and CEO of the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey. Hoffman, who holds a B.A. degree summa cum laude from Harvard, is the winner of the first National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. He is also a prominent author, science educator, and host of the PBS television series Great Minds of Science. He was president and editor in chief of Discover, in a ten-year tenure with that magazine, and served as president and publisher of Encyclopædia Britannica before returning full-time to writing. Author of at least ten books, he has appeared on CBS This Morning and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer as a correspondent. He also designed the treasure map in the 1984 film, Romancing the Stone. Derived from a Kirkus review: Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873-1932) is well remembered, even revered, in his native Brazil, and perhaps in France—for it was in Paris, in 1903, that he invented a personal airship in which he tooled around, tethering it like a horse to the gas lamppost in front of his apartment. Santos-Dumont made his discoveries and blueprints available to all comers, quite unlike the Wright Brothers. Whereas the Wright Brothers conducted their experiments secretly, Santos-Dumont made a point of staging well-advertised public demonstrations. But things went badly for the inventor when he witnessed the destruction wrought by aircraft in WWI; he committed himself to an asylum in Switzerland, before removing himself to Brazil, where he committed suicide in the midst of a civil war in which both sides employed bombers, remarking, "I never thought my invention would cause bloodshed between brothers." Hoffman makes a case for restoring this fine fellow to the history of flight.