Rating: 
Summary: A great moving story!
Review: I picked up this book because Simon Winchester, in the New York Times, called Wings of Madness "brilliant" and an "unforgettably good book." Fortunately this atmospheric book (it evokes Paris at the end of the 19th century) lived up to its billing. This is an incredible story that deserves to be widely known. The Brazilian-born aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont was a tremendous aerial showman and a great humanitarian. He flew the first working dirigible around the tip of the Eiffel Tower in 1901 in front of biggest gathering of human beings--scientists, royalty, peasants to whom he promised money if he was successful--that had ever come together before. He went on to shrink the size of his airship so that he became the only person in history to have an aerial car. He tied it to the lampost in front of his Parisian apartment and flew every night to fancy restaurants like Maxim's and handed a rope from the balloon to the doormen to hold. He was so famous that Parisians imitated his dress--his Panama hat and the peculiar upturned shirt collars he wore to make himself seem taller. He believed that flying machines would bring about world peace and was emotionally destroyed when he saw his beloved inventions commandeered to kill people in World War I. This moving story ends with his mysterious death in circumstances that I don't want to give away.
Rating: 
Summary: Marvelous!
Review: Largely unknown outside of his native Brazil where he is nothing short of a national icon, Alberto Santos-Dumont was a pioneer in both lighter and heavier than air flight. Paul Hoffman tells Santos-Dumont's story from his earliest days as a child experimenting with paper balloons to his final sad days, broken by the fact that the world credited the Wright Brothers with the first flight of a plane and the use of that invention in war. A lot of research clearly went into Wings of Madness and Hoffman has done a marvelous job of reporting on a nearly forgotten chapter and pioneer of aviation history.
Rating:
Summary: The race for powered flight - a great topic!
Review: Paul Hoffman has given us a biography of a man who seems to be relatively unknown here in the United States, although he is very well known in his native Brazil - Alberto Santos-Dumont.I purchased this book because I had been exposed to Santos-Dumont while listening to James Tobin's To Conquer the Air book, and I wanted to understand more about this uncommon man. Santos-Dumont was an innovator, and experimented primarily with lighter-than-air flying craft (such as attaching a motor to a hydrogen filled balloon). He eventually moved into heavier than air flying craft by inventing airplanes in the same genre as the Wright Brothers. I found the book to be fast-paced and well-written. However, I had two minor concerns with the book - first, there was precious little introduction to some people that were important in the development of powered flight (i.e. Octave Chanute or Otto Lilienthal), despite the fact that they were mentioned numerous times during the book. The second concern I had was that one chapter seemed to have nothing more than a tangential connection to Santos-Dumont - a chapter devoted primarily to the use of aircraft in World War I. Despite these two minor shortcomings, I highly recommend the book to all, since it truly allows us to explore a man that many of us know virtually nothing about, and his important work leading to powered flight.
Rating:
Summary: Fernando Carneiro Review - Portuguese
Review: Que nada, vai cair no erro deles??? Ficar se ufanando??? So me ufano de bossa nova, xota de mulata, cachaca e futebol. A Embraer como esta e uma resposta mais a altura. Eu vi aquele Jornal Nacional com os caras mostrando la o aviao caindo na pocilga. Coitados os caras queriam replicar, os proprios irmaos Wright nao pegavam ninguem. Mas ficar um pais competindo com o outro pra ver quem e o primeiro aviao, quem peida mais fedorento isso e bobagem. One World is Enough for All of Us... O Santos Dumont era simpatico, a casa dele em Petropolis legal e ele ta la no Smithsonian... Quem sabe, sabe, agora fica parecendo mercador de sapato brigando um com outro dizendo que :AAaah eu inventei o sapato , nao voce!!" Ufanismo idiota... Os gringos nao tao nem ai e tao cagando pois tem essa mentalidade. Se falarem que Rick Davies inventou soccer eles acreditam, mas nao gastemos tempo com isso. Ja saiu mil materias aqui no Boston Globe, NYT sobre Santos Dumont e o angulo, no mes passado, era dizer que os brasileiros tinham razao mas tavam recalcados e paus da vida...
Rating:
Summary: A charming but surface picture of a man and an era
Review: The author is an award-winning science and technology writer and editor, and his subject is one of the greatest pioneers of the dawn of controlled flight. Alberto Santos-Dumont was one of the great celebrities of turn-of-the-century Europe, but he is now little known outside of his native Brazil. Mr Hoffman seeks to remedy that obscurity. He describes Santos-Dumont's ancestral and social background, outlines his early interest and development of powered dirigible flight, discusses his early heavier-than-air flights (Europe's first), and then describes Santos-Dumont's tragic later years. Santos-Dumont appears to have been a brilliant but eccentric gentleman who rarely did much follow-up work on his innovations, but who then became depressed when aviation deviated from his early visions.
The book is well-written and his description of this aviation pioneer is a valuable addition to this centenary of powered and controlled heavier-than-air flight. Mr. Hoffman introduces us to many aspects of early flight (including the bureaucratic and childish in-fighting among organizations which gave out the first aviation prizes) and he paints a colorful picture of life a century ago. The book appears well-researched and well-documented (although it relies heavily on newspaper accounts, second-hand information, and hyperbole) although it does not break any ground in biographical writing. Still, anyone interested in an account of the early years of powered flight, or in life in pre-WWI European society, will probably find this book a very pleasant and charming read.
Rating:
Summary: A charming but surface picture of a man and an era
Review: The author is an award-winning science and technology writer and editor, and his subject is one of the greatest pioneers of the dawn of controlled flight. Alberto Santos-Dumont was one of the great celebrities of turn-of-the-century Europe, but he is now little known outside of his native Brazil. Mr Hoffman seeks to remedy that obscurity. He describes Santos-Dumont's ancestral and social background, outlines his early interest and development of powered dirigible flight, discusses his early heavier-than-air flights (Europe's first), and then describes Santos-Dumont's tragic later years. Santos-Dumont appears to have been a brilliant but eccentric gentleman who rarely did much follow-up work on his innovations, but who then became depressed when aviation deviated from his early visions.
The book is well-written and his description of this aviation pioneer is a valuable addition to this centenary of powered and controlled heavier-than-air flight. Mr. Hoffman introduces us to many aspects of early flight (including the bureaucratic and childish in-fighting among organizations which gave out the first aviation prizes) and he paints a colorful picture of life a century ago. The book appears well-researched and well-documented (although it relies heavily on newspaper accounts, second-hand information, and hyperbole) although it does not break any ground in biographical writing. Still, anyone interested in an account of the early years of powered flight, or in life in pre-WWI European society, will probably find this book a very pleasant and charming read.
Rating:
Summary: Santos Dumont a Brazilian Indiana Jones
Review: The beauty of this book is that reading it, you will feel going back in time, participating in the life and adventures of Mr. Santos Dumont. The author did a very good work in presenting not only history, but recreating the personality of Alberto Santos Dumont, a man that is totally focused on his inventions. As I read the book I found many reasons to think that Mr. Steven Spielberg would have material for a very good film....Santos Dumont was quite a man, great imagination, and a truly courageous person.
Hoffman descriptions of the way inventors in the end of the XIX century risked their lives, to develop and use the new technologies of their time, provides a good framework to understand Santos Dumont behavior, risking his life on many experiments for the good of mankind. My perspective as to where Santos Dumont should be placed in aviation history differs from most Brazilians. The airplane was the product of several inventions done by different people, each one contributing with a piece of the puzzle. There is room for the accomplishments of many inovators, like Otto Lillienthal, the Wright Brothers, Alberto Santos Dumont, Glenn Curtiss... and many others. I think Hoffman gives a balanced view of aviation history and Santos Dumont accomplishments. The book is worth reading and you will enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: rkrb is crazy!!!!!!
Review: This is an excellent book. First of all, I would probably recommend that "rkrb" read the book again. Santos Dumont is truly the "Father of Aviation", the main purpose of his discoveries was to provide a different way of transportation. Santos Dumont was focused on the advance of transportation to humans, and not to make money, he did not care about patente or anything like that. And Second, he did not kill himself after seen a airplane throwing bombs, there was never a bombing in Brazil. Santos Dumonts died due to health problems, and not because of mental problems. Santos Dumonts was a great man, and not only to Brazilians, but to most of europeans, who just like Brazilians do not even know the wright brothers. Over all, the book is fantastic.
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