THE FLYING MAN

A soaring tribute to a pioneering German aviator who had a dream and the perseverance to achieve it.

Perseverance is certainly the overriding theme here, as Downs begins his profile with Otto Lilienthal at 14, fruitlessly flapping a rickety-looking set of manufactured wings. The author chronicles years of determined research, observation, trial and error, and crashes as Otto and younger brother Gustav work hard at attaining their goal despite skepticism from those around them. The book ends in August 1896 with the inventor at 48 sailing in a much more elaborate (if still rickety) glider high over an awestruck crowd of onlookers with, in Hohn’s breezy but precisely detailed illustrations, a blissful expression on his face. The author relegates the dampening news that Lilienthal died in a crash the following week to an afterword but, along with providing notes on the numerous diagrams of his subject’s evolving glider designs, credits both his example and influence on his better-known contemporaries, the Wright brothers. Flyers and groundlings alike in the pictures are White. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Makes an able case that both titular monikers are justified.