Charles A. LindberghRezensionen

Lindbergh’s first account of his transatlantic journey, titled “We,” was published shortly after the historic flight in 1927. Lindbergh was never happy with this rushed account of his journey, written largely by the publisher. His account of the journey, The Spirit of St. Louis, was published in 1953 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography in 1954. Charles’ wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was a ghostwriter on the book, and its success is widely attributed to her writing skills.
The Spirit of St. Louis is an autobiographical account by Charles Lindbergh about the events leading up to and including his 1927 solo trans-Atlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis, a custom-built, single engine, single-seat monoplane (Registration: N-X-211). The book was published on September 14, 1953, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954.

I enjoyed this. It was interesting to see what he considered to be safe or inconsequential in aviation in the 20s. I give it 4* because he tells a good story, but then kind of trails off. It was entertaining for sure, and I could tell he's just sharing a story, not a professional author. I will end up reading it again. I have the 3rd edition from 1927, passed down to me by my great uncle.

Excellent book. Lindbergh began work on the book in 1939, and it went through 6 drafts before publication. His wife, Anne Lindbergh, offered her experience in helping Lindbergh to edit the book. Lindbergh's original book, "We", as an unsatisfactory product that was rushed to market in July 1927. He had only 3 weeks to work on that book, and was never satisfied with the product. With years under his belt and 14 years under writing, The Spirit of St. Louis is a wonderful book masterfully told.

Lindberg flies across the Atlantic.

2/4 (Indifferent).

The actual flight is pretty good, especially considering it's basically just Jimmy Stewart falling asleep. But that only makes up about a third of the movie, and the rest is terrible. It feels like some sort of school play.½

Lindbergh's version of Lindbergh. It did win a Pulitzer Prize. Nothing about Lindbergh's support of the Nazis.

Excellent book. Lindbergh began work on the book in 1939, and it went through 6 drafts before publication. His wife, Anne Lindbergh, offered her experience in helping Lindbergh to edit the book. Lindbergh's original book, "We", as an unsatisfactory product that was rushed to market in July 1927. He had only 3 weeks to work on that book, and was never satisfied with the product. With years under his belt and 14 years under writing, The Spirit of St. Louis is a wonderful book masterfully told.

The famous flier's own story of his life and his transatlantic flight, together with his views on the future of aviation. Flying was his trade, his means of livelihood, but the love of it burned in him with a fine passion and his fame gave him a wider scope of usefulness, he announced he would devote himself wholeheartedly to the advance of aeronautics.

Lindbergh’s first account of his transatlantic journey, titled “We,” was published shortly after the historic flight in 1927. Lindbergh was never happy with this rushed account of his journey, written largely by the publisher. His account of the journey, The Spirit of St. Louis, was published in 1953 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography in 1954. Charles’ wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was a ghostwriter on the book, and its success is widely attributed to her writing skills.
The Spirit of St. Louis is an autobiographical account by Charles Lindbergh about the events leading up to and including his 1927 solo trans-Atlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis, a custom-built, single engine, single-seat monoplane (Registration: N-X-211). The book was published on September 14, 1953, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954.

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 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.

A compilation of letters from Charles Lindbergh describing his youth on a farm next to the Mississippi River in Little Falls, Minnesota. The letters offer an unfiltered peek at his childhood, often with little sentimentality but plenty of interesting details about his experiences and at rural life in the early 20th century.

Autobiografia del noto aviatore statunitense che, a soli quindici anni volò senza scalo da New York a Parigi a bordo del monomotore Spirit of Saint Louis.

INDICE

Prefazione dell'Ambasciatore americano a Parigi
La fanciullezza e i primi voli
Il mio primo aeroplano
Esperienze fatte nei voli con passeggeri
Verso il Sud
L'allenamento a Brooks-Fiekl
Ricevo le ali di pilota
Raggiungo il Servizio aereo postale
Due discese forzate in paracadute
San Diego -Saint-Louis -New-York
New-York -Parigi
Conclusione

Nota dell'Editore
Nota. dell'Autore

Una breve dimostrazione di come il mondo ammirò Lindbergh:
Parigi
Bruxelles
Londra
Washington
New-York
Saint -Louis

A fascinating read, but at 1002 pages unnecessarily long. There are details which do not add to an understanding of the man or his thoughts. Is it really necessary for him to tell the reader, every time he drives to New York City, which car he takes and where he parks? This is symptomatic of much of the data, particularly in the early years of the diary.

Nevertheless, it is well worth reading. The style of writing changes once the US enters the war and he takes up various defense related duties. The pages on his time in war-time South Pacific are much more narrative than his earlier diary entries. His obvious interest in his work there, including combat missions, comes through. Similarly, his post-war travels to Germany are also revealing of the man.

The story behind the autobiographical The Spirit of St. Louis, published 60-years ago this fall, is interesting because Lindbergh spent 14 years working on it, putting in more effort than actually flying across the Atlantic, and perhaps even his entire 5-year flying career to that point. He wrote and re-wrote the 600 pages at least 6 times, laboring over semi-colons and words to an exacting degree. The book has a structure that reflects the experience of being alone while struggling mentally through uncertainty and final achievement. It's one of the greatest works of American 'outdoor literature', and memoirs, of the 20th century and will be read (and readable) for a long time. As novelist John P. Marquand observed, "It has a timeless quality and an authentic strength and beauty that should cause it to be read by this generation and by many following — as long, in fact, as anyone is left who cares for fine writing and high courage."

Incredibly well-written and interesting story of Lindbergh's life prior to and during his historic flight. I care little for airplane facts or the history of flight, but this book held my interest all the way through.

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 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.

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 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.

Sometimes you find a book at just the right time. I was reading Lindberg's biography, then found this in a garage sale the same week. It was hard to believe he actually fought in the Pacific, with no military appointment (could he have been considered McArthur's mercernary). The America First year entries and antiSemetic entries are not edited, and explains a lot of the thought processes not only of LIndberg, but of Hoover who met with him. I also on another level find this an excellent example for anyone writing a diary. The way he moves between writing about international figures with whom is is meeting, and then about his children...little boy learning to swim, pet turtles.

One entry that facinated me was his reflection on selling his Franklin car of 9 years in favor of a Ford (Ford tried 3 motors before selling it). How many of us remember our cars. What a good model for a diary entry about a favorite car.

The book was published in 1970 and I wonder how many people at the time were interested in these entries.

I also have his wife's diaries from the same period.

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, no reliable weather forecasts or current information, over an open ocean). Makes me feel sheepish for complaining about a 5 hour delay in Philly.

soft cover, perfect bound periodical

A good, easy read. Allows people with 21st century sensibilities to understand the sensibilities if first third of the 20th century.

4107 The Spirit of St. Louis, by Charles A. Lindbergh (read 18 Dec 2005) (Pulitzer Biography prize for 1954) I noted this book won a Pulitzer for biography, so I read it. It is the 57th Pulitzer-winning biography I have read, leaving 33 such I have not read. This is a most extraordinarily good book, telling of the famed flight beginning at 7:52 A.M. on My 20, 1927, and ending in Paris some 33 hours later. The account of preparing for the flight, and of the ordeal the flight was, was of high interest. Some of Lindbergh's philosophizing was of lesser interest as was also true of his accounts of past tribulations before the flight, but a most worthwhile and attention-holding book.

History of Financial Advice Collection.

Excellent Condition

No cover; HB bright blue; many clippings and comments