Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Washington Post Book World

Hertog's account of Anne and Charles's courtship is a lovely balance of the personal and public aspects of their romance. Her description of their embrace of pseudo-scientific racist doctrine is chilling. She also does well at depicting Anne Morrow Lindbergh's egregious self-effacement and her willingness to stand by her man despite what her own intellect, honor and sense told her; these qualities are well-evoked and well-documented...

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"My life began when I met Charles Lindbergh," wrote Anne Morrow Lindbergh. As a reserved Smith College junior who harbored the ambition to become a writer, she met her future husband in 1927, soon after he became the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic. Raised in a privileged yet conventional environment as the daughter of Dwight Morrow, the American ambassador to Mexico, Anne embarked on a life of adventure with Lindbergh, although she soon recognized the difficulty of reconciling her literary ambitions with accompanying her husband as copilot, navigator and radio operator. After the tragic kidnapping and death of their first child, which they blamed in part on dogged press coverage of their personal life, the Lindberghs moved abroad. They became embroiled with the leaders of Nazi Germany, according to Hertog, because Charles believed that the democratic system was weak and ineffectual, as evidenced by the unbridled freedom of the press. Hertog contends that, although she was not as convinced as her husband of the integrity of the Nazi cause, Anne publicly supported him out of wifely loyalty. On their return to the U.S. and with her husband's encouragement, Anne launched a successful literary career, publishing memoirs, poetry and chronicles of her aerial adventures. Although not as exhaustive as Scott Berg's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Charles, this sympathetic portrayal of Anne as a wife, mother, poet and feminist may well find a readership more interested in a talented woman's creative struggle than in the oft-told Lindbergh story. Photos not seen by PW. Agent, Georges Borchardt; BOMC selection; 6-city author tour. (Dec.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

This biography of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, ten years in the writing, grew from Hertog's lifetime fascination with Lindbergh and her writing. Hertog had studied her for 20 years before she even met her in 1985 in a Montana airport. Though Hartog was never allowed access to Anne's unpublished papers, she eventually became acquainted with her friends and family, read everything ever published by her, and interviewed her ten times. The story is told against the backdrop of Charles Lindbergh's life because, as Anne said, "My life began when I met Charles Lindbergh." This meeting occurred seven months after his famous solo transatlantic flight. Anne, a daughter of Dwight Morrow, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, became the mother of five children and an aviator in her own right. Always she was writing: Bring Me a Unicorn, Dearly Beloved, Gift From the Sea, and other books, some of them her diaries. She was protected by wealth from the harsh realities ordinary people faced in the 1920s, during WW II and after, but had an uncanny ability to connect with her readers. Hertog captures the mind and heart of her complex subject. Readers will be intrigued by Anne's meeting with the aviation hero, the story of the kidnapping of their son, the trial of the man charged with the crime, and the Lindberghs' constant need to evade the early 20th-century version of a media feeding frenzy. This reviewer was interested in Hertog's handling of the anti-Americanism charge that has dogged Charles's reputation. Charles believed in eugenics, disdained democracy (after all, democratic institutions shaped the man who killed his son), and showed incredible naiveté in letting the Nazis use him to give falseinformation about Germany's air strength to the west just before launching WW II. Anne saw a dark side to the Nazis to which Charles seemed oblivious. His status as aviation hero caused the U.S. government to overlook his pro-Nazi views and grant him a job in army aviation. Anne recognized Charles's unmistakable charisma and appeal to the American public and believed "...it was her duty as his wife and the mother of his children to submit to his views." Readers who enjoy Anne's books will be drawn to this title. Hartog, who came to the job of writing this biography without academic or even writing credentials, has shown fine scholarship (including objectivity) to inform her attraction to a significant leader of the thinking of our times. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1999, Random House, Anchor, 561p, illus, notes, bibliog, index, 21cm, 99-28759, $17.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Edna M. Boardman; former Lib. Media Spec., Magic City Campus, Minot, ND, March 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 2)

Library Journal

The publisher's claim that this is the "first full-length biography" of Lindbergh must surely surprise Dorothy Herrmann, whose Anne Morrow Lindbergh: A Gift for Life (1992; Penguin, 1993. reprint) is still in print. After a sustained campaign, journalist Hertog did gain personal interviews with Lindbergh, but by allowing Lindbergh to speak for herself, she leaves almost every paragraph so studded with quotation marks as to be obtrusive, even irritating. Hertog's handling of the kidnapping and the Lindberghs' dalliance with Nazi Germany is objective, clear, and logical, but her conclusions about Anne Morrow Lindbergh's independence and integrity are less convincing; throughout, the lead role in her life's drama is taken by Charles. Still, the subject and her times are interesting, and given the scarcity of Lindbergh biographies and the subject's advancing age, this will be a justifiable addition to larger collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/99.]--Barbara Ann Hutcheson, Greater Victoria P.L. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

David Gelernter

Lots of books are called definitive biographies, but this actually is one. It is exhaustively researched and lovingly written. It has the texture and fineness of hand embroidery. This is one life that will stay written.
—Commentary

Kirkus Reviews

A fawning volume that focuses on the first 50 years of the celebrated writer, aviator (Lindbergh was the first woman to qualify as a glider pilot), and wife of the Lone Eagle, Charles A. Lindbergh. Hertog, a freelance journalist and photographer, acknowledges early on that she is star-struck, revealing that the woman she calls "Annie" was "my mentor and my friend"—even before they'd met. After a chance encounter with Lindbergh in an airport in 1985, Hertog "pursued" her, eventually interviewing her ten times during the ten years she devoted to the biography. The book, Hertog's first, begins in 1927. Charles has returned to North America from his solo flight across the Atlantic and is the world's first mega-celebrity; Anne is a daughter of privilege (her father is Ambassador to Mexico). The two eventually meet, quickly marry, and spend much of their subsequent lives flying all over the world and dodging a predacious press corps. Hertog covers in some detail the two most controversial periods of the Lindberghs' lives—the 1932 kidnaping and murder of their son and the deep admiration that both Lindberghs felt for Nazi Germany in the pre-WWII years. (Charles was an early and enthusiastic proponent of eugenics.) In prose often precious, Hertog strives mightily to portray Anne as a gifted woman caught in the amber of convention, but another Anne emerges instead—a woman of wealth and leisure, an arrogant, deeply self-centered woman, racist and anti-Semitic (like her husband), whose treacly little books, packed with truisms, enjoyed lengthy stays on best-seller lists. In 1957, poet and critic John Ciardi was the first to declare Empress Anne wore no clothes, but Hertog dismisseshim as a "womanizer" who suffered from "spiritual turmoil." (By contrast, Anne's sexual infidelity brought her "consolation.") Although Herzog claims to have lifted Lindbergh's "mask," she reveals little, and instead paints on her subject yet another false, flattering face. (84 b&w photos, some not seen) (Book-of-the-Month Club selection; author tour)