Opening paragraphs

In as strong a photograph as any taken of the brothers together, they sit side by side on the back porch steps of the Wright family home on a small side street on the west end of Dayton, Ohio.  The year was 1909, the peak of their fame.  Wilbur was forty-two, Orville thirty-eight.  Wilbur, with a long poker face, looks off to one side, as though his mind were on other things, which most likely it was.  He is lean, almost gaunt, long of nose and chin, clean-shaven, and bald.  He wears a plain dark suit and high-laced shoes, much in the manner of their preacher father.
-David McCullough,  The Wright Brothers