Charles Lindbergh's solo flight from New York to Paris captured the imagination of a postwar generation hungry for heroes, and cemented an exalted spot for the 25-year-old pilot from Minnesota in the collective American imagination. A. Scott Berg's thorough new biography of the aviator suggests that despite the public scrutiny that accompanied his every move until his death in 1974, Lindbergh remained an intensely private man. The son of ill-matched parents who separated when he was 6, he was painfully shy and emotionally guarded. "Aviation created a brotherhood of casual acquaintances ... in which he felt comfortable," writes Berg with characteristic perceptiveness.

Lindbergh's wife, the writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh, gave Berg unrestricted access to her husband's and her own voluminous personal papers--and he made good use of them to assess both the couple's relationship and their activities. Probably the most startling revelation is a brief but candid discussion of Anne's affair in the late 1950s with a New Jersey doctor, which helped assuage her need to vent emotions in a way her buttoned-up husband found insupportable. (During the horrendous days in 1932 when their 20-month-old son was kidnapped and killed, Berg notes, she never once saw Charles cry.) The biography is solid on all aspects of Lindbergh's career, including his notorious urging that America stay out of World War II; Berg rebuts charges that Lindbergh was a Nazi or a traitor, but rightly criticizes the anti-Semitism latent in some of his speeches. With this book, Berg succeeds in surveying Lindbergh's fascinating life and assessing its historic impact.

Amazon.com Audiobook Review
In 1927, Charles Augustus Lindbergh made the world smaller when, at 25, he completed his fabled flight from New York to Paris. He spent the rest of his life watching the world close in around him. Actor Eric Stoltz smoothly captures A. Scott Berg's erudite prose, impressive narrative drive, and fascinating minutiae, and by doing so earns an intense sympathy for and understanding of Lindbergh's relentless need for privacy and his frustration at losing it to his worldwide fame. (Running time: six hours, four cassettes) --Lou Schuler

From Publishers Weekly
Lindbergh, writes Berg, was "the most celebrated living person ever to walk the earth." It's a brash statement for a biography that makes its points through a wealth of fact rather than editorial (or psychological) surmise, but after the 1927 solo flight to Paris and the 1932 kidnapping of his infant son, most readers will agree. Berg (Max Perkins) writes with the cooperation, although not necessarily the approval, of the Lindbergh family, having been granted full access to the unpublished diaries and papers of both Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The result is a solidly written book that while revealing few new secrets (there are discoveries about Lindbergh's father's illegitimacy and Mrs. Lindbergh's 1956 affair with her doctor, Dana Atchley) instructs and fascinates through the richness of detail. There are no new insights into the boy flier, no new theories about the kidnapping, but there is a chilling portrait of a man who did not seem to enjoy many of the most basic human emotions. Perhaps more attention to Lindbergh's near-worship of the Nobel Prize-winning doctor, Alexis Carrel, would have explained more about his enigmatic character. Berg details Lindbergh's prewar trips to Nazi Germany at the request of the U.S. government; his leadership in the America First movement; his role in first promoting commercial aviation; and, during WWII, improving the efficiency of the Army Air Corps. As the book reaches its conclusion, however, it's the sympathetic portrait of Mrs. Lindbergh creating a life of her own while her husband chooses to be elsewhere that gives the biography the emotional scaffolding it lacked. The writing is workmanlike and efficient, and the story, familiar as it may be, encapsulates the history of the century. Photos. (Sept.) FYI: Putnam was said to have paid a seven-figure advance for Lindbergh in 1990.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Berg, whose biographies of Max Perkins and Sam Goldwyn are central texts in their fields, restores some luster to complicated aviator hero Charles Lindbergh by presenting his very full life?from his lonely rural childhood to the enormity of his Spirit of St. Louis accomplishment; the kidnapping of his baby son, which led to the "Trial of the Century"; his enthusiastic state visits to Hitler's Germany; and his Pulitzer Prize and later conservation work. For the generation that has mostly known Lindbergh through his child's murder and a profoundly stupid speech he later made, this big, thoroughly researched book is a fine work of restorative storytelling.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Geoffrey C. Ward
In Lindbergh, A. Scott Berg brings us about as close as I suspect we will ever get to the man himself.

Michael J. Ybarra, The Wall Street Journal
"Compelling...This kind of heroic, tragic and ultimately puzzling subject that is irresistible in its complexity"

The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani
Often thrilling, but disturbingly opaque, Berg's ... biography of Lindbergh turns that historic flight into a narrative tour de force.

Benjamin Schwarz, Los Angeles Time Book Review
"One of the most important biographies of the decade"

TH Watkins, Washington Post Book World
"Comprehensive and invaluable"

David M. Shribman, the Boston Sunday Globe
"An astonishing biography. Charles Lindbergh's is the ultimate American life, and A. Scott Berg's new biography is the ultimate...exploration of that life."

From Kirkus Reviews
A magisterial work chronicling the life of a great American hero, from a National Book Award - winning author. If you're writing a biography, choosing a subject involved in both one of the century's great adventures and one of its great tragedies is a good start. If you go beyond a barrier-breaking flight to Paris and a baby's kidnapping and can still draw upon controversial opposition to entering WWII and major contributions to the development of commercial aviation, so much the better. That this figure was also constantly in the media spotlight, regularly met with leading luminaries throughout the world, and had a wife whose life and accomplishments are fascinating in their own right, you have the substantive ingredients for a great biography. Fortunately for all of us, Berg (Goldwyn: A Biography, 1989; Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, 1978.) does a superb job with this material. His account of Lindbergh's life is detailed without plodding, and extensive without seeming long; the pace is excellent throughout, with the reader continually drawn forward by the prose, even though one already knows what is going to happen. Berg's perspective on Lindbergh is admiring but not fawning or unbalanced. Despite the appropriate respect accorded a man who genuinely did great things, Berg does not shy away from Lindbergh's apparent anti-Semitism, his rigidity as a parent, regular absences as a husband, and lifelong restlessness. There's an evenhanded look at Lindbergh's trips to Germany and politics prior to WWII, and the insights into Lindbergh's relations with the press are particularly interesting. As the first real media star, Lindbergh had an extreme reaction to the constant hounding by reporters and photographers - unprecedented in his day - that becomes understandable. Imagine coverage of Michael Jordan after the NBA finals, the O.J. Simpson trial, and the British royal family all rolled into one. Who, faced with this barrage, wouldn't become uncommunicative and flee the country? With Berg's free access to previously unavailable documentation, this is sure to be the definitive biography of Lindbergh. (First serial to Vanity Fair; film rights to DreamWorks) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Charles Lindbergh is at once one of the century's best-known and most misunderstood figures. In Lindbergh, bestselling author and National Book Award winner A. Scott Berg lifts the veil of myth and mystery that has surrounded the aviator since his moment of triumph on May 21, 1927, when he landed in Paris, the first person to cross the Atlantic alone in an airplane. It's an insightful look at a remarkable life.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

National Book Award winner A. Scott Berg is the first and only writer to have been given unrestricted access to the massive Lindbergh archives - more than two thousand boxes of personal papers, including reams of unpublished letters and diaries - and to be allowed freely to interview Lindbergh's friends, colleagues, and family members, including his children and his widow, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The result is a biography that clarifies a life long blurred by myth and half-truth. From the moment he landed in Paris on May 21, 1927, Lindbergh found himself thrust upon an odyssey for which he was ill prepared - the first modern media superstar, deified and demonized many times over in a single lifetime. Berg casts dramatic new light on the lonely, sometimes twisted childhood that formed his character; the astonishing flight and thrilling, then overwhelming aftermath; the controversies surrounding the trial of his son's accused kidnapper; the storm over Lindbergh's fascination with Hitler's Germany and over his active role in the isolationist America First movement; and his remarkable unsung work devoted to medical research, rocketry, anthropology, and conservation. At the heart of it all is his fascinating, complex marriage with Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a relationship far from the storybook romance the public imagined, one filled with sudden joy and bitter darkness, and which forged her into one of the century's leading feminist voices. Berg exposes the many facets of the private Lindbergh, including his ingenious medical work with Dr. Alexis Carrel, developing the precursor to an artificial heart; his pioneering support of rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard; his soul-searching visit to Camp Dora at Bergen-Belsen; his life with the primitive Masai tribe in Africa, and his discovery of the Tasaday in the Philippines; his fight to save the whales off the coasts of Japan and Peru; and his deeply moving final days in Maui, where he supervised the digging of his own grave.

SYNOPSIS

Charles A. Lindbergh is at once one of the century's best-known and most misunderstood figures. In his fascinating new biography, Lindbergh, betselling author and National Book Award winner A. Scott Berg lifts the veil of myth and mystery that has surrounded the aviator since his moment of triumph on May 21, 1927, when he landed in Paris, the first person to cross the Atlantic alone in an airplane. Berg is the first author to be given unrestricted access to the massive Lindbergh archives -- more than 2,000 boxes of personal papers, including reams of unpublished letters and diaries -- and to be allowed to freely interview Lindbergh's friends, colleagues, and family members, including his children and widow. It's an insightful look at a remarkable life.

FROM THE CRITICS

Entertainment Weekly

...[S]harply focused...

Anthony Bianco - Business Week

. . .Berg for the most part makes artful use of his treasure-trove [of archives]....But the reader would have been better served [with] more trenchant analysis of his often compounding subject.

Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times

Often thrilling, but disturbingly opaque, Mr. Berg's [book] turns that historic flight into a narrative tour de force...that conveys...all the magic, danger and courage of the young pilot's achievement....In the end, Mr. Berg's depiction of Lindbergh as 'naive in war as he had been in peace' is insufficient....It is a serious flaw...that cast a dark shadow over [a] dazzling writerly achievement...

John J. Miller - National Review

A. Scott Berg never mythologizes Charles Lindbergh, but he understandably admires him. With honesty and style, he performs the important task of reviving this flawed but essential figure, a true American hero.

Publishers Weekly

Lindbergh, writes Berg, was "the most celebrated living person ever to walk the earth." It's a brash statement for a biography that makes its points through a wealth of fact rather than editorial (or psychological) surmise, but after the 1927 solo flight to Paris and the 1932 kidnapping of his infant son, most readers will agree. Berg (Max Perkins) writes with the cooperation, although not necessarily the approval, of the Lindbergh family, having been granted full access to the unpublished diaries and papers of both Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The result is a solidly written book that while revealing few new secrets (there are discoveries about Lindbergh's father's illegitimacy and Mrs. Lindbergh's 1956 affair with her doctor, Dana Atchley) instructs and fascinates through the richness of detail. There are no new insights into the boy flier, no new theories about the kidnapping, but there is a chilling portrait of a man who did not seem to enjoy many of the most basic human emotions. Perhaps more attention to Lindbergh's near-worship of the Nobel Prize-winning doctor, Alexis Carrel, would have explained more about his enigmatic character. Berg details Lindbergh's prewar trips to Nazi Germany at the request of the U.S. government; his leadership in the America First movement; his role in first promoting commercial aviation; and, during WWII, improving the efficiency of the Army Air Corps. As the book reaches its conclusion, however, it's the sympathetic portrait of Mrs. Lindbergh creating a life of her own while her husband chooses to be elsewhere that gives the biography the emotional scaffolding it lacked. The writing is workmanlike and efficient, and the story, familiar as it may be, encapsulates the history of the century.Read all 16 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Not My Hero
Frankly I must say that after finishing this book I was reminded of that famous quote about the lovely city of Oakland, only in this case it applied to subject Lindbergh. "Is there any there there.". My conclusion from reading this wonderfully written and detailed book is that Lindbergh could best be described as a stick figure of a man, someone who could well have been cast in one of those post WW2 black and white farmer brown cartoons. As a matter of fact the only criticism of Mr. Berg that I have is that his obvious infatuation with Anne Morrow, who by all accounts was an almost noble and long-suffering soul, may have resulted in his occasionally incorrectly depicting Lindbergh as having several almost human like qualities. Lindbergh at his best was a narrow-minded, ill-tempered martinet. A cross, colorless bossy man given to keeping copious lists and to hassling his wife and children over mindless meaningless micro details. A man who spent an inordinate amount of time fretting over how he could get his kit packed into as small a suitcase as was humanly possible. I kid you not.

Yet I by no means wish to dismiss in any way his single great achievement. However I do wonder whether this man, who strapped himself into a flimsy gas filled monoplane, who, despite his lack of sleep the night before and facing at least 36 hours of non-stop flight over the Atlantic ocean, could have actually possessed the capacity to fear or worry about the consequences. As the saying goes, " where there is no sense there can be no pain."

Charles Augustus Lindbergh is quite likely the best 20th century illustration of what can occur in a nation obsessed with the cult of hero worship. He was I submit the wrong man at the right time. Moreover, after being defrocked, after being exposed as the mean spirited bigoted quasi-traitor that he was, he was able, with the assistance of a cadre of America first, isolationist fellow travelers and a few well meaning aviation fanatics, to rehabilitate or recapture, to some measure, his good name and reputation despite his unrepentant propensity for intolerance. It is with incredulity that I read and reread many of his public utterances made on the eve of WW2. His absolute indifference to the nazi torture of the Jews depicted in the context of his behavior as a major nazi apologist and lapdog belie his subsequent claims that he acted only out of his devotion for his country. After all, how many can say they were the nazi's most decorated American.