Americanos vão conhecer Santos Dumont

O livro "Wings of Madness", lançado recentemente, está mostrando para os americanos que o avião não foi inventado pelos mecanicos de bicicleta do interior de Ohio.

O autor, Paul Hoffman, conta a história de um baixinho excêntrico, rico e, provavelmente, homossexual que, aos 18 anos, foi para Paris em 1897 com 500 mil dólares no bolso.

Além das aventuras aéreas, o livro mostra como era a vida de Santos-Dumont na França e promete revelar pela primeira vez detalhes obscuros da morte do nosso "Pai da Aviação".

A crítica do New York Times é muito positiva.

Delightful, too, are the details of his style and swagger. He kept a table at Maxim's, where he dined after each ascent, and he wore wristwatches specially designed for him by Louis Cartier. But there was a darker side, too. In the end Santos-Dumont cut a tragic figure: he not only fell ill and became deeply depressed by the Wright Brothers' swiftly accumulated public-relations success, but was also appalled when he learned that what he saw as his invention was used to such lethal effect in the Great War. He died in 1932 at 59 under curious circumstances that Mr. Hoffman reveals in full for the first time.

It is this human side of the story that Mr. Hoffman's unforgettably good book tells with compassion and sympathy. His revelations will probably cause a small sensation back in Brazil, where Alberto Santos-Dumont's heart is preserved in a glass-and-gold sphere in a small museum at an air force base near Rio. In the United States, where he is now almost unknown, this book deserves to elevate him again to the heroic stature that he once, if briefly, enjoyed.