Lindbergh:Best biography I've read-intelligent & entertaining
reading non-fiction, avid reader, read for fun
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SEP
16
2008
Lindbergh —
LindberghBy A. Scott Berg
G.P Putnam’s Sons edition, 1998
Berkley paperback edition, 1999
Lindbergh, by A. Scott Berg, is the best non-fiction book I have read this year and the best biography I have ever read. Ironically, I didn’t exactly choose to read this book. As I left for a seven-week trip, I had two bags of clothes and four bags of books. I totally over packed on the clothes and under packed on the books. After I had exhausted my supply I perused the bookshelf of a rented cabin hoping for something that wasn’t a cousin or stepchild to a Harlequin. I hit the literary lottery when I pulled out Lindbergh, a 562-page biography of Charles Lindbergh. After years of dedication to trying to get kids hooked on books, perhaps I had some great book karma coming my way.
My knowledge of Charles Lindbergh was pretty much limited to some general facts about his record breaking transatlantic flight and the kidnapping and murder of his first born son. Berg begins this story three generations back and carries readers through every year, every relationship, every accomplishment and every choice, both courageous and flawed. This biography is not just an in depth history of Charles Lindbergh and his family. Lindbergh’s flights took him all around the world and his interests and accomplishments soared through medicine, manufacturing, politics, primitive cultures and the environment. So in many ways, a century of the history of the world is woven into and accessible in this Lindbergh biography. I don’t care to give away much of what can be learned but I was fascinated to find that Lindbergh invented the Lindbergh Pump, an organ chamber in which an organ was successfully cultivated for the first time in vitro.
Berg offers admirable balance in presenting the story of a man who in the eyes of some “in just fifteen years had went from Jesus to Judas.” This biography illustrates intricately how the events of his time affected Lindbergh’s life and how profoundly Lindbergh’s life affected the world.
To research Lindbergh, Berg was given complete access to Lindbergh’s private papers and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and each of their five living children all shared their papers, journals and cooperation as well. There are many photos included as well. Despite knowledge of their cooperation, this novel made no attempt to paint a glossy, pretty post card of this family’s journeys.
Lindbergh was both a New York Times Best Seller and New York Times Notable Book and oh, yeah, it was a winner of The Pulitzer Prize. More important to me, it was a read worth my time.
Berg is also the author of Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, a National Book Award winner, and Goldwyn: A Biography.
My Viewpoint:
I didn’t open this book with a particular interest in Charles Lindbergh but found that soap operas and spy novels have nothing on this enthralling true story. Whether or not you have a specific interest in Charles Lindbergh or in aviation history, both of which are fascinatingly presented in Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg, if you have an interest in history in general or enjoy biographies, Lindbergh is a winner.
Lindbergh is recommended by AngelaWLaFon
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