Customer Reviews

Charles A. Lindbergh, Lone Eagle (Library of American Biography)

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This is part of Longman's series of American Biography. They are short, with a reading level set for high school students in American History. It is a little surprising to me that the average high school student doesn't know Lindbergh. To those of us born before World War II, he was a famous person. But then again, his famous flight across the Atlantic was as far away to the modern high schooler as the Spanish-American war was to my generation.

Mr. Hixson does an excellent job of describing Lindbergh's early flying of the mail, the solo flight across the atlantic and his personal life. Of particular concern to today's student was Lindbergh's attitude towards World War II.

Lindbergh was a prominent member of the American First group that strenuously wanted to keep America out of the war. He was strongly condemned. I particularly liked Lindbergh's comment: 'I have always believed that every American cieizen had the right and duty to state his opinion in peace and to fight for his country in war.' Lindbergh was not in the military, but did serve as an aviation consultant in the South Pacific. He flew missions against the Japanese and developed new techniques to extend the range of American fighters, particularly the P-38.

It is my understanding tha this series is marketed to the post adolescent teen market and widely sold to libraries.

For such purposes, and for the mildly curious, this length volume is adequate.

From the tone of the book description abovw, this may be in the nature of a hagiography. Best if it offends both right and left for the truth is most often in the middle.

The national acclaim for Lindbergh that swept the country in the twenties and later was on the order of the hysterical acclaim given the Beatles in later years. Having been mildly aware of the former, as an adult observoe of the latter, I certainly know more of the latter.

Growing up in the forties and being constantly reminded in my consciousness of the all surrounding atmosphere of World War Two, I was not aware of any other state of existence. The depression was not a memory for me at all for my family had managed to hang on in the lower middle class throughout the Great Depression which was never a dinner table subject even when Grandad came over on Sunday. The only result of the Great Depression on me is that I am ten years younger thsn I would have been if my parents had married soon after they first met. :)But the thirties were the days of dismissing of married female teachers, and mother had had to pay off her father's debts. Dad still had to live at home and scraped by on even less.

But though the depression was not in my childhood perceptions Lindbergh was. In that period of my life, I just knew he was famed for his flight. He was a national hero, the Boy Scouts published a book "The Lone Scout in the Sky: The Story of Charles A. Lindbergh" by James E.West, which remained in their catalog for many years. (West was the long time chief executive of the national BSA and was resonsible for shaping it through the forties.)

Lindbergh's writings and those of his equally famous and publically beloved aviatrix wife, Ann Morrow, sold widely in the thirties. The tragedy of their baby's kidnapping and murder cemented the national affection for him. When I first became aware of him, his grest flight was the only subject I knew.

Later on, I learned of the kidnapping and by the late fifties I had become aware of the political controversies about his actions in the late thirties with the America First isolationist movement and his open admiration of the German Luftwaffe,

Because of these activities he was not favored by President Roosevelt, and thus, though he was a reserve colonel he was never mobilized after Pearl Harbor. Lindbergh did manage to get to the Pacific area as a civilian technical consultant and flew several combat missions against the Japanese. From then on he just faded away, I have no recollection of him or even when he died.

Thus Chsrles A. Lindbergh has joined the American pantheon of heroes who many aew aware of and consider to be worthy of praise but haven't a clue as to why. Not totally forgotten, he is now and then still commemorated. In the last twenty years or so there has been a Lindbergh drive next the Montgomery County Airpark near Gaithersburg, Md, but most would not know who he was.

So such works are useful if not definitive.