Most people recognize Wilbur and Orville Wright as the first in flight, in 1903, on the blustery sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But few know that the next aviator, a Brazilian, flew almost three years later and was nevertheless widely credited as being the first. Or that a world-famous escapologist, a Hungarian, made the first flights in Australia but afterwards never flew again. Or that in Spain the first public display of a flying machine led to religious riots.

The first pilots from each of a hundred countries have their stories told in this work. A "flight" is defined as that made by a "heavier-than-air machine capable of taking off from ground level carrying a pilot, who controls to some degree the ascent, descent and path of the machine." To be called "successful," the flight must be "sustained past the point to which the machine's take-off momentum would normally carry it through the air."