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Lindbergh (A. Scott Berg)

Someone once said that writing a biography of J.R.R. Tolkien was difficult, because after his newsworthy early years not much happened. How do you sustain a full-length biography when the last twenty years of a man's life are, all in all, devoid of interest? "And he lived happily ever after. The end."

Berg has faced no such problem in tackling the life of Charles Lindbergh, the most public private man -- or is it the other way around? Lindbergh's fame came early and, despite his avowed desire for privacy, for the rest of his life he never was far from the public eye.

Lindbergh's early life was shaped by an unemotive father and an unstable mother. His resulting self-reliance was of great value in organizing and completing his solo trans-atlantic flight to Paris, but seems to have left him distant and unable to relate to people on a personal level except on his own terms.

He was certainly hell on his wife and family, which the book makes clear despite -- or because of? -- the extensive help of the Morrow family and its archives. It's easy to see why a young, somewhat sheltered girl would fall in love with the dashing, world-famous aviator. Less understandable is why she put up with him for all those years. Lindbergh made it clear that his family must grow in his image, imitating his inner demons rather than complementing them. Success (as Charles defined it, of course) was required; emotion was not allowed.

Clearly Anne Lindbergh had different needs. She had thoughts of divorce, but apparently dismissed them out of hand. Were times that different then?

Berg covers the Lindbergh baby kidnapping thoroughly. Conspiracy theorists tout that Hauptmann was wrongly convicted, but the book makes clear that despite the irregularites of the trial, the circumstantial evidence for a guilty verdict was overwhelming. Hauptmann went to the chair protesting his innocence. The lesson to be drawn from that isn't that he was innocent, but that he was a snake.

Lindbergh's German sympathies before World War II are portrayed straightforwardly. Certain elements of his diaries on which Berg's account is based were expurgated by Anne, and yet what remains is damning enough. The author quotes a caustic comment in relation to Lindbergh's wildlife conservation efforts, to the effect that the one species whose prospective extinction never seemed to bother him was homo sapiens Judaicus. The author examines Charles' beliefs in some detail, with the unmistakable whiff of Trent Lott present in Lindbergh's not exactly understanding what others found objectionable in his words.

Towards the end of Lindbergh's life the major excitement is over but the author compensates with a few juicy details of Charles and Anne's increasingly strained marriage. Anne cops to an ongoing liaison that she eventually breaks off, while Charles is tarred only with a reference to a compromising picture of himself with a Polynesian native. One senses the family scissors at work again in their diaries.

In all a well-written, enjoyable book about a man with many good qualities, but ultimately more admirable from afar than up close.

Dave Townsend / townsend@patriot.net / 28 Jan 02

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