Lindbergh

From Barnes & Noble

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.

Michiko Kakutani

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...
— The New York Times

Anthony Bianco

. . .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.
—Business Week

John J. Miller

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.
— National Review

Entertainment Weekly

...[S]harply focused...

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the cooperation, although not necessarily the approval, of the Lindbergh family, having been granted full access to the unpublished diaries and papers of both Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.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.

Forbes Magazine

Brilliant biography of one of the most extraordinary icons of 20th-century America. Thanks to newsreels, radio and mass-circulation newspapers, Charles A. Lindbergh, 75 years ago this month, became the first modern media superstar, following his truly heroic transatlantic flight from the U.S. to Paris. Central casting couldn't have chosen a more impressive-looking young man. The only child of utterly incompatible parents--a self-absorbed mother and an oft-remote, frequently absent father--Lindbergh learned early on to fend for himself. His family was always on the move when Lindbergh was a youngster; he never spent more than a year at any one school. He ultimately found his home in the air. (27 May 2002)
—Steve Forbes

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.

Lenny Glynn

Award-winning biographer A. Scott Berg's definitive portrait of the Lone Eagle caputures the bright adventure and dark controversy of one of the century's most astonishing lives.
— People Magazine

Stephen E. Ambrose

One of the great stories, told by a master storyteller.
— The New York Times Book Review

John J. Miller

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.
— National Review

James Tobin

A many-layered life story, one that demands to be pondered anew for its own drama and for what it tells about the 20th century.
— Chicago Tribune Book World

Benjamin Schwarz

One of the most important biographies of the decade.— Los Angeles Times Book Review

Sam Tanenhaus

...Berg relates [Lindbergh's] remarkable story with energy and competence, unfolding his themes with a naturalness possible only because he has mastered vast quantities of detail...[Lindbergh's personality's] conjunction of light and dark, of heroism and folly...continues to make Lindbergh so intriguing, even as his claim to our interest steadily weakens.
— Commentary

Anthony Bianco

. . .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.
— Business Week

Michiko Kakutani

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...
— The New York Times

David Shribman

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.
— The Boston Globe

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; Max Perkins: Editor of Genius) 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 byreporters 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.