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Lindbergh: Pulitzer Prize Winner Paperback – September 1, 1999
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Few American icons provoke more enduring fascination than Charles Lindbergh—renowned for his one-man transatlantic flight in 1927, remembered for the sorrow surrounding the kidnapping and death of his firstborn son in 1932, and reviled by many for his opposition to America's entry into World War II. Lindbergh's is “a dramatic and disturbing American story,” says the *Los Angeles Times Book Review, and this biography—the first to be written with unrestricted access to the Lindbergh archives and extensive interviews of his friends, colleagues, and close family members—is “a thorough, level-headed evaluation of the glories, tragedies, and often infuriating complexities of this extraordinary life” (Newsday).
- Print length688 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBerkley
- Publication dateSeptember 1, 1999
- Dimensions6.02 x 1.5 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100425170411
- ISBN-13978-0425170410
- Lexile measure1200L
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“The definitive account of a dramatic and disturbing American story...One of the most important biographies of the decade...an extraordinary achievement.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“A magisterial work...a superb job...With Berg's free access to previously unavailable documentation, this is sure to be the definitive biography of Lindbergh.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Berg's biography [is] sure to renew interest in this unique American hero.”—People Magazine
“In Lindbergh, A. Scott Berg brings us about as close as I suspect we ever will get to the man himself. The first biographer to be granted unfettered access to Lindbergh's private papers, Berg provides enough fresh detail to trace the roots of Lindbergh's personality, its strengths as well as its maddening flaws, all the way back to his turbulent boyhood.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A biography that will be one of the publishing events of the year...one of the most extraordinary lives of the 20th century.”—Vanity Fair
“Fanatically researched and very moving...stunning in its fairness to a harsh and unknowable Charles Lindbergh.”—Esquire
“A comprehensive and invaluable text.”—The Washington Post Book World
“The most outstanding piece of nonfiction that I have read this year...Berg does a spectacular job of establishing why Lindbergh proves such a powerful icon for the 20th century...A substantial piece of history that illuminates an important figure...It's the kind of book that took almost a decade to create. And it's worth it.”—USA Today
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"...living in dreams of yesterday, we find ourselves still dreaming of impossible future conquests..."
-C.A.L.
For more than a day the world held its breath...and then the small plane was sighted over Ireland.
Twenty-seven hours after he had left Roosevelt Field in New York—alone, in the Spirit of St. Louis—word quickly spread from continent to continent that Charles A. Lindbergh had survived the most perilous leg of his journey—the fifteen-hour crossing of the Atlantic. He had to endure but a few more hours before reaching his destination, Paris. Anxiety yielded to anticipation.
The American Ambassador to France, Myron T. Herrick, went to St. Cloud after lunch that Saturday to watch the Franco-American team-tennis matches. When he took his seat in the front row, five thousand fans cheered. During the course of the afternoon, people in the stands heard newsboys shouting the headlines of their éditions spéciales, announcing Lindbergh's expected arrival that night. In the middle of the match, Herrick received a telegram—confirmation that Lindbergh had passed over Valencia in Ireland. All eyes were on the Ambassador as he hastily left courtside, convincing most of the spectators that their prayers were being answered. Before the match had ended, the stands began to empty.
Herrick rushed back to his residence in Paris, ate a quick dinner at 6:30, then left for the airfield at Le Bourget, to the northeast of the city. "It was a good thing we did not delay another quarter of an hour," Herrick recalled, "for crowds were already collecting along the road and in a short time passage was almost impossible."
The boulevards were jammed with cars ten abreast. Passengers poked their heads through the sliding roof panels of the Parisian taxis, greeting each other in jubilation. "Everyone had acquired a bottle of something and, inasmuch as the traffic moved very slowly," one reveler recalled of that night in 1927, "bottles were passed from cab to cab celebrating the earthshaking achievement." A mile from the airfield, the flow of traffic came to a standstill.
Once the radio announced that Lindbergh had flown over southern England, mobs formed in the heart of Paris. Thirty thousand people flocked toward the Place de l'Opéra, where illuminated advertising signs flashed news bulletins. Over the next few hours, the crowds spilled into the Boulevard Poissonière—until it became unpassable—where they expected to find the most reliable accounts of Lindbergh's progress posted in front of the Paris Matin offices. "Not since the armistice of 1918," observed one reporter, "has Paris witnessed a downright demonstration of popular enthusiasm and excitement equal to that displayed by the throngs flocking to the boulevards for news of the American flier, whose personality has captured the hearts of the Parisian multitude."
Between updates, people waited in anxious silence. Two French fliers—Nungesser and Coli—had not been heard from in the two weeks since their attempt to fly nonstop from Paris to New York; and their disappearance weighed heavily on the Parisians' minds. Many muttered about the impossibility of accomplishing a nonstop transatlantic crossing, especially alone. Periodically, whispers rustled through the crowd, rumors that Lindbergh had been forced down. After a long silence, a Frenchwoman, dressed in mourning and sitting in a big limousine, wiped away tears of worry. Another woman, selling newspapers, approached her, fighting back her own tears. "You're right to feel so, madame," she said. "In such things there is no nationality—he's some mother's son."
Close to nine o'clock, letters four feet tall flashed onto one of the advertising boards. "The crowds grew still, the waiters frozen in place between the café tables," one witness remembered. "All were watching. Traffic stopped. Then came the cheering message 'Lindbergh sighted over Cherbourg and the coast of Normandy.' " The crowd burst into bravos. Strangers patted each other on the back and shook hands. Moments later, Paris Matin posted a bulletin in front of its building, confirming the sighting; and bystanders chanted "Vive Lindbergh!" and "Vive I'Américain!" The next hour brought more good news from Deauville, and then Louviers. New arrivals onto the scene all asked the same question: "Est-il arrivé?"
Fifteen thousand others gravitated toward the Étoile, filling the city block that surrounded a hotel because they assumed Lindbergh would be spending the night there. Many too impatient to stand around in town suddenly decided to witness the arrival. Students from the Sorbonne jammed into buses and subways. Thousands more grabbed whatever conveyance remained available, until more than ten thousand cars filled the roads between the city and Le Bourget. Before long, 150,000 people had gathered at the airfield.
A little before ten o'clock, the excited crowd at Le Bourget heard an approaching engine and fell silent. A plane burst through the clouds and landed; but it turned out to be the London Express. Minutes later, as a cool wind blew the stars into view, another roar ripped the air, this time a plane from Strasbourg. Red and gold and green rockets flared overhead, while acetylene searchlights scanned the dark sky. The crowd became restless standing in the chill. Then, "suddenly unmistakably the sound of an aeroplane...and then to our left a white flash against the black night...and another flash (like a shark darting through water)," recalled Harry Crosby—the American expatriate publisher—who was among the enthusiastic onlookers. "Then nothing. No sound. Suspense. And again a sound, this time somewhere off towards the right. And is it some belated plane or is it Lindbergh? Then sharp swift in the gold glare of the searchlights a small white hawk of a plane swoops hawk-like down and across the field—C'est lui Lindbergh. LINDBERGH!"
On May 21, 1927, at 10:24 P.M., the Spirit of St. Louis landed—having flown 3,614 miles from New York, nonstop, in thirty-three hours, thirty minutes, and thirty seconds. And in that instant, everything changed—for both the pilot and the planet.
There was no holding the one hundred fifty thousand people back. Looking out the side of his plane and into the glare of lights, Lindbergh could see only that the entire field ahead was "covered with running figures!" With decades of hindsight, the woman Lindbergh would marry came to understand what that melee actually signified. "Fame—Opportunity—Wealth—and also tragedy & loneliness & frustration rushed at him in those running figures on the field at Le Bourget," she would later write. "And he is so innocent & unaware."
Lindbergh's arrival in Paris became the defining moment of his life, that event on which all his future actions hinged—as though they were but a predestined series of equal but opposite reactions, fraught with irony. Just as inevitable, every event in Lindbergh's first twenty-five years seemed to have conspired in propelling him to Paris that night. As the only child of woefully ill-matched parents, he had tuned out years of discord by withdrawing. He had emerged from his itinerant and isolated adolescence virtually friendless and self-absorbed. A scion of resourceful immigrants, he had grown up a practical dreamer, believing there was nothing he could not do. A distracted student, he had dropped out of college to learn to fly airplanes; and after indulging in the footloose life of barnstorming, he had been drawn to the military. The Army had not only improved his aviation skills but also brought precision to his thinking. He had left the air corps to fly one of the first airmail routes, subjecting himself to some of the roughest weather in the country. Restless, he had lusted for greater challenges, for adventure.
In the spring of 1927, Lindbergh had been too consumed by what he called "the single objective of landing my plane at Paris" to have considered its aftermath. "To plan beyond that had seemed an act of arrogance I could not afford," he would later write. Even if he had thought farther ahead, however, he could never have predicted the unprecedented global response to his arrival.
By that year, radio, telephones, radiographs, and the Bartlane Cable Process could transmit images and voices around the world within seconds. What was more, motion pictures had just mastered the synchronization of sound, allowing dramatic moments to be preserved in all their glory and distributed worldwide. For the first time all of civilization could share as one the sights and sounds of an event—almost instantaneously and simultaneously. And in this unusually good-looking, young aviator—of apparently impeccable character—the new technology found its first superstar.
The reception in Paris was only a harbinger of the unprecedented worship people would pay Lindbergh for years. Without either belittling or aggrandizing the importance of his flight, he considered it part of the continuum of human endeavor, and that he was, after all, only a man. The public saw more than that. Indeed, Harry Crosby felt that the stampede at Le Bourget that night represented nothing less than the start of a new religious movement—"as if all the hands in the world are...trying to touch the new Christ and that the new Cross is the Plane." Universally admired, Charles Lindbergh became the most celebrated living person ever to walk the earth.
For several years Lindbergh had lived according to one of the basic laws of aerodynamics—the need to maintain balance. And so, in those figures running toward him, Lindbergh immediately saw inevitable repercussions. At first he feared for his physical safety; over the next few months he worried about his soul. He instinctively knew that submitting himself to the idolatry of the public could strip him of his very identity; and the only preventive he could see was to maintain his privacy. That reluctance to offer himself to the public only increased its desire to possess him—the first of many paradoxes he would encounter in his lifelong effort to restore equilibrium to his world.
"No man before me had commanded such freedom of movement over earth," Lindbergh would write of his historic flight. Ironically, that freedom would be denied him thereafter on land. Both whetting and sating the public's appetite for every morsel about him, the press broke every rule of professional ethics in covering Lindbergh. They often ran with unverified stories, sometimes stories they had made up, transforming him into a character worthy of the Arabian Nights. Reporters stalked him constantly—almost fatally on several occasions—making him their first human quarry, stripping him of his rights to privacy as no public figure had ever been before. Over the century, others would reach this new stratum of celebrity.
The unwanted fame all but guaranteed an isolated adulthood. And, indeed, Lindbergh spent the rest of his life in flight, searching for islands of tranquility. Early on, he was was lucky enough to meet Anne Morrow, Ambassador Dwight Morrow's shy daughter, who craved solitude as much as he did. They fell in love and married. Their "storybook romance," as the press always presented it, was, in fact, a complex case history of control and repression, filled with joy and passion and grief and rage. He scourged his wife into becoming an independent woman; and, in so doing, he helped create an important feminist voice—a popular diarist who also wrote one of the most beloved volumes of the century, and another that was one of the most despised.
The Lindberghs' love story had a tragic second act. His fame and wealth cost them their firstborn child. Under melodramatic conditions, Lindbergh authorized payment of a large ransom to a mysterious man in a graveyard; but he did not get his son in return. The subsequent investigation of the kidnapping uncovered only circumstantial evidence; and the man accused of killing "the Lindbergh Baby" never confessed—thus condemning the "Crime of the Century" to eternal debate. Because the victim's father was so celebrated, the case entered the annals of history, and laws were changed in Lindbergh's name. The media circus that accompanied what veteran courtwatchers still refer to as the "Trial of the Century" forever affected trial coverage in the United States. The subsequent flood of sympathy for Lindbergh only enhanced his public profile, making him further prey for the media as well as other criminals and maniacs. In fear and disgust, he moved to Europe, where for a time he became one of America's most effective unofficial ambassadors. Several visits to Germany in the 1930s—during which he inspected the Luftwaffe and also received a medal from Hitler—called his politics into question. He returned to the United States to warn the nation of Germany's insuperable strength in the impending European war, then to spearhead the American isolationist movement. As the leading spokesman for the controversial organization known as America First, he preached his beliefs with messianic fervor, incurring the wrath of many, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt. By December 7, 1941, many Americans considered him nothing short of satanic—not just a defeatist but an anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi traitor.
Lindbergh had spent most of his adult life establishing the role of aviation in war and peace, proving himself one of the prime movers in the aviation industry. But because of his noninterventionist stance, Roosevelt refused to allow Lindbergh to fly after Pearl Harbor with the very air force he had helped modernize. He found other ways to serve. As a test pilot in private industry, he developed techniques that increased both the altitude and range of several planes in America's fleet, saving countless lives. The military looked the other way as Lindbergh insisted on engaging in combat missions in the South Pacific; but his failure to condemn Nazi Germany before World War II haunted his reputation for the rest of his life.
One of his greatest services to his country proved to be in helping launch the space program. As the first American airman to exhibit "the right stuff," Lindbergh inspired his country's first astronauts by sheer example. But more than that, he was—unknown to the public—the man most responsible for securing the funding that underwrote the research of Dr. Robert H. Goddard, the inventor of the modern rocket. A friend of the first man to fly an airplane, Lindbergh lived long enough in a fast-moving world to befriend the first man to walk on the moon.
In time, Lindbergh came to believe the long-range effects of his flight to Paris were more harmful than beneficial. As civilization encroached upon wilderness in the world he helped shrink, he turned his back on aviation and fought to protect the environment. He rededicated his life to rescuing nearly extinct animals and to preserving wilderness areas. For years this college dropout advanced other sciences as well, performing medical research that would help make organ transplants possible. He made extraordinary archaeological and anthropological discoveries as well. A foundation would later be established in Lindbergh's name that offers grants of $10,580—the cost of the Spirit of St. Louis—for projects that further his vision of "balance between technological advancement and preservation of our human and natural environment."
Lindbergh believed all the elements of the earth and heavens are connected, through space and time. The configurations of molecules in each moment help create the next. Thus he considered his defining moment just another step in the development of aviation and exploration—a summit built on all those that preceded it and a springboard to all those that would follow. Only by looking back, Lindbergh believed, could mankind move forward. "In some future incarnation from our life stream," he wrote in later years, "we may understand the reason for our existence in forms of earthly life."
In few people were the souls of one's forbears so apparent as they were in Charles Lindbergh. As a result of this transmigration, Lindbergh believed the flight that ended at Le Bourget one night in May 1927 originated much farther back than thirty-three and a half hours prior at Roosevelt Field. It started with some Norsemen—infused with Viking spirit—generations long before that.
Product details
- Publisher : Berkley (September 1, 1999)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 688 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0425170411
- ISBN-13 : 978-0425170410
- Lexile measure : 1200L
- Item Weight : 1.56 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.02 x 1.5 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #362,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #193 in Aviation History (Books)
- #1,521 in Traveler & Explorer Biographies
- #1,887 in Political Leader Biographies
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Aside from the major aspects of Lindbergh's life, I was disappointed with the treatment Lindbergh received from FDR during World War II as I have always admired FDR as a great, creative politician. While I don't necessarily agree with some of the things Lindbergh was quoted as saying through the America First movement, FDR was unable to separate Lindbergh the man from Lindbergh the political mind, ultimately leading to FDR's blackballing of Lindbergh's involvement during the war. It seems FDR realized that Lindbergh was literally his political rival as both were considered super-men by their adoring publics, so he attempted to squash Lindbergh when he was down. These kind of limits placed on any American citizen, political adversary or not, does not speak well of Mr. Roosevelt. I will say that Lindbergh made a mistake when he chose to send copies of his correspondence with Roosevelt to the press while the original letter to Roosevelt was still in the mail, which often led to newspapers printing Lindbergh's letters opposing FDR's political stances before Roosevelt even had time to read the original letter. Lindbergh should have known you don't undercut a politician when it comes to his public, especially because FDR valued his popularity with the public so much.
All in all, a great work on a great man. Lindbergh was not great from a domestic standpoint as he was not a good father or even a dedicated husband, but he was a man who explored and conquered a number of frontiers. It was only later in his life when he realized that aviation as he once knew it in the early 1920s was changing. The plane flies the man now, not the other way around, he once remarked in the 1950s. He was fascinated with the new aviation technology that came from the post-war boom and yet he loathed the capabilities of that very technology which had the potential to wipe out civilizations.
I can't say enough about the book or the man. At 562 pages, it might seem long but it is hard to put down. A great book that has my highest recommendation.
Berg is a very skilled biographer. The book is full of great drama -- some of it inspired by Lindbergh's life and all he did and was subjected to, but some of it resulting from his odd (to put it mildly) behaviors and actions. It is well written and gripping, which isn't a term I'd use with many biographies.
In fact, I was sufficiently impressed with this book that I've ordered Berg's biography of Woodrow Wilson.
There is one respect in which the book is lacking -- after the book was published and became a best seller, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, etc., Berg was contacted by one of seven (!) illegitimate children Lindbergh had with two or three German women. I don't fault Berg for not including this in his original biography, but given I just picked up the book last year, it's surprising that it didn't include at least an afterword noting yet another bizarre aspect of this most bizarre man.
In this fine (but necessarily incomplete--more on that later) biography by A. Scott Berg, the modern reader is transported back to the beginning of the 20th century when aviation was still in its infancy, hazardous and somewhat miraculous. Berg naturally begins with Lindy's upbringing in Minnesota where the staunchly midwestern values imparted to him as a child and young man would form the principles of modesty, humbleness, practicality and stoicism that guided him for much of his adult life. A relatively poor student with middling academic talents, Lindbergh found his calling in mechanical interests that eventually led him to aviation. Never completing a college degree, he instead pursued a career as an air mail and stunt show pilot, eventually becoming enthralled with the challenge of the Orteig Prize offered for the first successful crossing of the Atlantic by plane.
The story of the Atlantic crossing by a solitary 25 year old pilot is, of course, dramatic and interesting in itself, but of greater significance to Lindbergh was the life-altering impact that the crossing would have on his life. Upon landing in Le Bourget, France, he was immediately subjected to a level of celebrity, stardom and public adoration that is even now, in the media-saturated 21st century, difficult to imagine. The relentless attention and hounding of the press that scrutinized his every move thereafter bred a deep resentment within in Lindbergh that would last for the rest of his life. Given the descriptions of media scum-baggery chronicled in the book, including completely fabricated stories, bogus quotations, stalking and worse, it's easy enough to understand.
While this is a biography of Charles Lindbergh, it's quite nearly a biography of his wife as well. Anne Morrow, daughter to a wealthy family whose patriarch was serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico at the time of her marriage to Lindbergh features prominently throughout the book as his steadfast partner, first in glamorous flying adventures around the world and later as fellow parent to six children, one of whom would be killed during a botched kidnapping and ransom scheme. The media circus surrounding the trial of perpetrator Bruno Hauptmann would further cement Lindbergh's disgust with the American press. Following the trial and unwilling to bear the continued pressures of living in a fish bowl of publicity, he and Anne would flee to England for several years to raise their second son.
Lindbergh remained a prominent figure in American public life long after his youthful conquest of the Atlantic, often to his detriment. His first public feud was with none other than president Franklin D. Roosevelt whom he took to task for summarily ending government contracts with private firms hired to deliver air mail throughout the country. FDR thought the contracts were won through shady, possibly illegal dealings. Lindbergh, in one of his earliest stands on principle, argued that not only were the contracts won fairly but that the use of inexperienced Army pilots in the place of veteran air mail carriers was the direct cause of pilot deaths, a claim well borne out by the alarming fatality statistics among the replacement pilots. Lindbergh would become persona non grata to FDR forever after.
The far more damaging public dispute would come in the form of the "Great Debate" in which Lindbergh took a firm stand for isolationism in the period preceding World War II. While it's largely forgotten now, prior to the bombing of Pearl harbor by the Japanese, many Americans, chastened by the experience of World War I and eager to avoid further European adventures, supported the view that the war was not in the country's best interests. Given his star power, Lindbergh became the public face of what was known as the "America First" movement. Not only did it further damage his standing with the U.S. administration (especially when he resigned his officer's commission to protest what he saw as FDR's war propaganda), it also significantly tarnished his previously heroic reputation with large swaths of the public ("from Jesus to Judas" as his wife would record). During this time, Lindbergh was especially damaged by his previous trip to Germany while working for the U.S. military to gain intelligence on the Luftwaffe, one of many such trips he would make to europe on behalf of the Army. While there, he received a medal from Hermann Goering and while the bestowment of medals in such diplomatic meetings was routine, this event would never be forgotten by the American people. Lindbergh further damaged himself by refusing to later return the medal.
Taken out of context, a few of his statements suggested to some that he supported the Nazi regime. While his true beliefs were largely misrepresented and misinterpreted in the press, he would be thought an anti-semitic racist for many years afterward. It's clear from Berg's detailed review of this period that Lindbergh, while strangely avoiding public criticism of the brutal aspects of Nazi government, was neither a supporter of fascism nor a Nazi-sympathizer. Rather, he appears to have been extremely naive about America's ability to avoid involvement in another European war...and extremely stubborn about ever backing down from that position. When the Pearl Harbor attack eventually came, he threw his full backing behind the national war effort. Because of his earlier political position, he was unacceptable as an officer but he found other ways of serving, going so far as to "secretly" fly combat missions in the Pacific while officially categorized as an "observer."
In his post-war life, his reputation was rehabilitated. Following FDR's death, and as war fever subsided, he returned to the good graces of the federal government, becoming a valued consultant to the newly-formed Strategic Air Command. In fact, he was so trusted, that he had full security clearance including access to materials considered "Top Secret."
In his later life, horrified by the prospect of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, he grew wary of mankind's relationship to technology. Once a pioneer of aviation and a staunch proponent of its advancement, he began to seriously question whether easy air travel and advanced technologies were advancing humanity's cause or simply hastening its destruction. His personal awakening in the 1960s coincided with that of many of his countrymen. He would spend his later years on exotic expeditions to some of the mos tremote locations of the earth, meeting with tribes that time had forgotten and speaking out on their behalf with local governments who had the power to save their way of life. His pleas often resulted in tangible legislation that helped preserve isolated peoples and endangered animal species.
Now for the problem with this biography...the 800 pound gorilla between the pages. It was written in the late 90s just prior to the stunning revelations that Lindbergh, while described as an imperfect though caring father as well as a loving but absentee husband who suffered from a perpetual wanderlust, had actually fathered an astonishing seven additional children with three different German women during those periods of "wanderlust." Berg, working only from what was publicly known about Lindbergh at the time, casts him as an imperfect but morally upstanding man with a firm commitment to high standards. While appearing to model them himself and demanding the same from those around him, we now know that Lindbergh was in fact an enormous hypocrite, shattering many of the theses of Berg's otherwise excellent book. How can these two Charles Lindberghs be reconciled? Only a future biography can help us answer that question.
Top reviews from other countries
Die Biografie geht zudem noch sehr ausführlich auf das weitere Leben Lindbergs ein, seine Familiendramen, das Leben im Mittelpunkt der Medien...
Spannend und mitreißend geschrieben, und doch die kritische historische Distanz zur Figur Charles L. wahrend.
Even so, this is a spectacular book written compellingly and elegantly. Lindbergh's experiences seemed to encompass all the important moments of the 20th century from aviation to Nazism and scientific breakthroughs, the space race and environmentalism. Much is of course devoted to the famous kidnapping; also, interesting is his relationship with his long suffering wife. He was not a likable personality, but be was intriguing and complex. This book is highly recommended and A Scott Berg is one of the best biographers I have had the pleasure to read.