GE features Wright State Special Collections and Archives in latest aviation blog post

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Aviation Page-Turners: The Top 10 Aviation Books of All Time (Probably)

On National Read A Book Day in September, we asked our Instagram and Twitter followers to name their favorite aviation-related page-turners. As you can imagine, the response was strong. To distill the list, we asked GE Aviation employees to rate the top 20 books on a five-star scale. The Aviation must-reads you see here were ranked based on the total number of stars each book received.

Far be it from us to claim that this list is definitive. (How could it be?!) But as far as #avgeek literature goes, it comes pretty darn close. If you don’t see your favorite aviation book on here, we want to know! Leave a comment so that the rest of us can check it out.

1. “The Wright Brothers” by David McCullough

Having tackled a parade of epochal events in American history—from the Johnstown Flood and Manifest Destiny to deeply researched bios of Harry Truman and John Adams—it seems only natural that two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner David McCullough would train his sights on Orville and Wilbur Wright. “The Wright Brothers” explores the courage and curiosity of the seemingly ordinary bicycle-manufacturing brothers from Dayton, Ohio, who went on to “invent the future of flight” for all humankind. McCullough’s gifts as a biographer and storyteller are in full effect, especially when writing about the brothers’ unwavering support for one another during times of both success and misfortune. As McCullough makes clear, Orville and Wilbur exemplified resilience in the face of adversity. It’s no wonder GE Aviation employees gave the book top marks!

Bonus: Call it luck, coincidence or divine providence, but just up the road from GE Aviation’s Evendale, Ohio, headquarters sits Wright State University’s Special Collections and Archives, home to the Wright Brothers Collection. We tracked down Dawne Dewey, who oversees the archives and has spent 30 years becoming an expert on all things Wright, to find out what it took to aid McCullough in his research for the book.

Read the original post at blog.geaviation.com