Charles A. Lindbergh (1902–1974)

For a man who describes himself as uninterested in spelling and grammar, Charles Lindbergh has written a wonderful book, completely worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. Lindbergh's book "The Spirit of St. Louis" follows his successful effort to become the first person to make a trans-Atlantic flight. Most regarded him initially as a crank -- too inexperienced and relying only on one-engine... but in the end his guts and courage carry him across the ocean to France. The story is told in great detail show more from the birth and of an idea to the construction of his airplane to an hour by hour account of his flight. Some of the tale gets bogged down a bit as he reminisces during the huge amount of downtown in the flight but overall this is a great account. show less

The Spirit of St. Louis was published in 1953, 26 years after Lindbergh's non-stop flight from NY to Paris. I believe he'd written two previous books about this flight. This book won him the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1954.

Lindbergh begins his story in Fall 1927, as he's flying air mail from St. Louis to Chicago in rebuilt WWI biplanes, in all sorts of weather. When the challenge of making a flight no one has yet accomplished takes hold, he solicits--and receives--more financial show more support than he expected. He had a well-defined image of the plane he wanted for the flight, and when he couldn't find it, he hired a small manufacturer in San Diego that designed and built it. In only a couple of months. He flew this new plane non-stop to St. Louis, 14 hours, his first night-flight. St. Louis to Long Island was another non-stop.

Then the big challenge. And big success.

Lindbergh packed a lot into this book. The long flight is interspersed with flashbacks to his childhood, his education, his training as a flier, and stories of his days barnstorming the midwest--giving folks their first airplane ride over their hometowns or farms, performing aerobatics, doing deviltry like wing-walking and parachute jumps. By including his flight logs, you learn that in the first few hours of the flight, passing over New England, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, his altitude seldom exceeded 500 feet. He used road maps to help locate landmarks and keep him on course. As he crossed the North Atlantic, in contrast, he soared to as much as 10,000 feet to avoid cloud cover and fog. Over the ocean, he had to rely on compass readings and mental calculations to adjust for estimated wind drift to navigate. The plane's airspeed never topped 110 mph.

Heroics, you learn, are less about surviving daring-do than about careful, through planning, calculating the risks, knowing yourself and what you are capable of. Lindbergh did all that. A single-engine (two or three would simply require more fuel), a solitary pilot (extra bodies are extra weight), a no-frills craft with enormous fuel capacity. Entertaining and informative. show less

Fantastic. The story is so unique, and Lindbergh's telling is so real and down-to-earth (how ironic). What I enjoyed the most was the way the narrative recalled those days from not-so-long-ago: how unusual it was for a plane to fly overhead (people came running to see, schools let out, businesses closed), how early it was in the lifecycle of aviation (crude instruments, no radio, open cockpits), and how amazing the New York-to-Paris flight was at the time (Lindbergh flying solo for 36 hrs, show more no reliable weather forecasts or current information, over an open ocean). Makes me feel sheepish for complaining about a 5 hour delay in Philly. show less

For a man whose mind ran to scientific discovery, courageous endeavor, and energetic living, it would not be expected to find him a skilled writer as well. These journal entries written between the years of 1938 and 1945 were kept intentionally by Lindbergh to record a time he recognized would be of great historical importance. The early sections on prewar Europe, prewar United States and his work in the Ford plants would be tedious were it not for the sharp writing and the descriptions of show more events not open to many. His and Anne's opposition to the war give us a window into the America First organization and their much-criticised activites to keep us neutral. But it is Lindbergh's Pacific adventures where his writing shines combining his great love for flying, an observant eye and photographic memory. "I looked down on a mountain stream cascading throught the jungle--a raveled white thread on a cloth of green--the heart of the New Guinea jungle, not even charted on the map until this war started, an area known only to natives and explorers, the objective of long, hazardous and carefully organized expeditions. Now we were flying over it as a matter of course, oblivious to the hardships and the romance, the solitude and the beauty of those jungle-covered mountains--four Lightnings cruising swiftly toward the enemy bases of Jefman and Samate--carrying violent death through the sky on the opposite side of the world from home." It was here in the Pacific that Lindbergh showed an obsession with what he found to be the unfair treatment of Japanese prisoners. Wherever he traveled over the Pacific he seemed to inquire of stories of mistreatment and torture. While in Europe a few weeks after the armistice he made a startling, self-revealing comparison of the sights in a newly liberated concentration camp to what he saw of our troops in the Pacific. A very complex, talented man who sincerely feared that the war would bring an end to Western Civilization, but once it began did all he could to help the airmen with the multiple problems arising from a hasty construction schedule at the beginning of the war. An absorbing 1000 page volume. show less