From Publishers Weekly
World-famous after his pioneering 1927 nonstop transatlantic flight, Charles Lindbergh, says Friedman, thought he was a god, and after a 1928 otherworldly experience in the Utah desert, he committed himself to exploring the science of eternal life. His sister-in-law's damaged heart valve led Lindbergh to seek out Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel, whose vascular-suturing technique made open-heart surgery and other advances possible. The pair embarked on an immortality project at New York's Rockefeller Institute. Utilizing Carrel's expertise with tissue culture and Lindbergh's mechanical engineering genius, they kept extracted organs alive and functioning for weeks at a time. As Friedman (
A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis) demonstrates, these biological experiments were integral to the pair's obsession with eugenics, their belief that the white race was endangered by lesser organisms and to Lindbergh's later enthusiasm for the Nazis. Friedman, who has written for
GQ and
Esquire, makes complex science accessible and serves as an absorbing cautionary tale on how two heroic reputations were marred by fascism and anti-Semitism. Photos.
(Aug. 21) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
A. Scott Berg's masterful biography Lindbergh (1998) encompassed a relationship that author Friedman expands in full: the Lone Eagle's friendship with Alexis Carrel (1873–1944). Carrel received a 1912 Nobel Prize for a surgical procedure essential to performing organ transplants and, in 1930, received visitor Charles Lindbergh in his New York laboratory. In retrospect, this appears to be the first of Lindbergh's flights from fame, and Friedman follows the deepening influence Carrel had on Lindbergh in the 1930s, ultimately arriving at Lindbergh's controversially diffident attitude toward the Nazi regime in Germany (though the Frenchman Carrel disliked it). Thorough in his narrative, astute in his appraisals, Friedman underscores the haven and scientific validation that Carrel provided for Lindbergh, who constructed special pumps for Carrel. Friedman weighs as well the effects on Lindbergh of Carrel's quasi-Darwinist ruminations about eugenics. Laying bare Lindbergh's faults, Friedman also displays his ability to change and his depth while giving the once-renowned Carrel his due. A boon for fans of aviation and medical history. Taylor, Gilbert
