While writing editorials and opinion columns at various times this century and last, I have sometimes offered a suggestion or two to members of the Connecticut General Assembly and the governor. I’ve never recommended a book. “The Wright Brothers” by David McCullough is the first. It’s a biography of the men who invented powered flight everywhere in the world — except here in Connecticut — thanks to those I’m inviting to have a read.

In a way, reading the book would be penance for dishonoring the memory and achievements of the Wrights by displacing them as the honorees of a state-sponsored festival known as Powered Flight Day. But I’m really doing them a favor because the book is great history and very entertaining.

McCullough’s the winner of Pulitzer Prizes for his biographies of Harry Truman and John Adams and National Book Awards for histories of the building of the Panama Canal and Theodore Roosevelt’s early years. He’s also been awarded the country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Before I continue my book report, a brief review of the mini-controversy over Powered Flight Day, which had been held annually “to honor the first powered flight by the Wright Brothers and to commemorate the Connecticut aviation and aerospace industry.”

But two years ago, the Wright Brothers were crossed out and replaced with one Gustave Whitehead in one of those end of the session bills often passed without being read. This one had a lot of stuff in it, naming days and weeks honoring various voting blocs’ ethnicities and adding a couple of more state songs in addition to defaming the Wrights.

No big deal, unless you prefer your history accurate.

Whitehead, a Fairfield County resident, is credited with pulling off a successful flight there in 1901, two years before the Wrights, by a small number of enthusiasts, many of whom, coincidentally, live in Fairfield County. The evidence is flimsy, a grainy photograph that could be of anything and a story in a Bridgeport newspaper that did not appear in the city’s other four papers, but was picked up by newspapers around the country without attribution.

Whitehead’s flight gained newfound legitimacy when it was called the first in 2013 by the editor of the respected “Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft,” who was looking for an attention getter for the publication’s hundredth anniversary issue. He achieved his goal but lost some of Jane’s credibility in the ensuing reaction, especially from historians. It got so bad that Jane’s finally issued something like a retraction this year, saying the Whitehead conclusion represented only the opinion of the writer.

Now we have McCullough’s book, an exciting story of an admirable pair of self-educated brothers from Ohio and the little known Wright sister, Katharine, a school teacher who took care of them and kept their Dayton bicycle shop running while the boys were away flying.

The Wrights meticulously documented their invention of the first airplane that worked, could fly a respectable distance, turn around in flight and do those other things that led the brothers and their successors to develop aviation.

There were many, including Whitehead, who had succeeded in getting contraptions off the ground for a few seconds and a few feet but it was the Wrights who made powered flight a reality, though they were secretive and did it without much attention from the press. McCullough writes that the first news story on their achievements was written by a flying enthusiast in his magazine devoted to bee keeping.

As to Whitehead, McCullough disposes of him in a single paragraph, calling the claims entirely without evidence and wholly untrue.

Or, if you’d prefer, a second opinion from an unquestionably neutral source, there’s this from the 170-year-old Scientific American:

“There is no doubt the prolific Gustave Whitehead deserves an honorable mention in the Hall of Aviation Pioneers. He built dozens of aircraft and workable gliders as well as several lightweight gasoline-powered engines, and Scientific American frequently mentioned his work. But was he ‘first in flight’? No. Those honors go to the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright, who completed the first powered, man-carrying, controlled flight of more than a few meters in the first decade of the 20th century.”

Case closed, at least in the world outside Connecticut.