Most people today know of Charles Lindbergh only that he made the first solo trans-Atlantic flight (in 1927); others, particularly those who were alive in the tumultuous days preceding World War II, remember him with disdain for his public support of Nazi Germany and his isolationist stance against America entering the conflict. Few knew that he also played a significant role in medical research of the era, which laid the groundwork for modern organ transplant techniques.

David M. Friedman’s The Immortalists focuses largely on that portion of Lindbergh’s life, when he worked in partnership with Dr. Alexis Carrel – a brilliant surgeon who also believed in ESP, prayer cures, euthanasia, and eugenics – the latter to be imposed by ruling councils of elders who would dispense immortality to those deemed worthy of the honor. The narrative returns to this obsession as a touchstone throughout the book, even after the partnership was interrupted by World War II, and eventually by Carrel’s death in Europe during the closing days of the conflict.

The biggest flaw in the book is that it often lacks focus. It’s unclear at times whether Friedman wanted to write a Lindbergh biography, a psychological study of a complex and often conflicted man, or a cautionary tale of the hubris of those who would play god. At times, it seems that there was an extra letter in the title – The Immoralists might have done the job just as well.

Reading it, one struggles with how to accept many facets of Lindbergh’s personality. There is the obsessive, self-confident, stubborn man with an engineering brilliance that far outshone his formal educational background. There is the intensely private man, bewildered by the cult of personality and intense public scrutiny that followed his history-making flight. There is the devastated father, convinced that media attention led to the kidnapping and murder of his firstborn child, and who fled the country with his family to protect his second son (and subsequent children) from the same fate. And there is the elite racist who felt Western civilization was in danger of being engulfed by the breeding proclivities of non-white races, and who saw as its savior the organization and scientific prowess of Hitler’s Germany. Ultimately, there is the man who underwent a shattering epiphany when he toured the rocket manufacturing facility at Nordhausen after the war, and saw firsthand the death camp that housed the laborers enslaved there by the brutal regime he had so publicly admired.

Friedman neither hero-worships Lindbergh nor excoriates his stunningly racist attitudes and the less-than-ideal state of his marriage to Anne Morrow. The most powerful moments of the book are the Nordhausen trip mentioned above, and Lindbergh’s 180-degree turnabout as he spent the last years of his life in conservation efforts. In a 1964 article for Reader’s Digest, this man who once sought the secret of immortality for the chosen few, who defended one of the most brutal regimes the world has ever known because he thought only it could save Western civilization, asked whether civilization was in fact progress. The final answer, he wrote, “will be given not by the discoveries of our science, but by the effect our civilized activities as a whole have upon the quality of our planet’s life.” ( )

As I don’t get out much, I knew exactly four things about Lindbergh (and nothing whatsoever about Carrel). I knew about his solo flight, I knew he solicited much of the funding for this from members of St Louis’s Noonsday Club, I had some fleeting knowledge about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, and I was told that his wife donated his library to Yale, not through any altruistic, scholarly motives but as a vehicle to get all of his crap out of the house to eliminate all physical reminders of “that crazy son-of-a-bitch” (presumably a paraphrase).

Thus my interest in The Immortalists was piqued (especially as I discovered it lying near to the open slot that supposedly housed the book I intended to check out - thanks again 3rd largest library in the US!). It’s a pretty amazing story. Whenever I’m presented someone of “Renaissance Man” stature I always raise an eyebrow as these types typically don’t have “day jobs” and can dabble in this, that, and the other armed with unlimited funds, inexaustable connections, and no need to deal with those pesky licensure issues that we have today (any given Jefferson, Da Vinci, or Ibn Rusd would no doubt have to languish in university classrooms for seven or eight decades before plying their trades today).

In a sense, Lindbergh is no different. As an aviator, he becomes the “most famous man in the world” at 25. This opens the door for his subsequent careers as an inventor/developer of medical research devices, primatologist, eugenics enthusiast, author, isolationist, WWII flying ace, environmentalist, philanderer and, finally, cancer victim. It’s an amazing story. At the least, perhaps he’s the last Renaissance Man? Maybe he’s actually more interesting than that hirsute Dos Equis guy? (though hard to imagine the “humorless” teetotaler selling lousy Mexican beer, but I digress…).

Of course, the Nobel Laureate Frenchman, Alexis Carrel - with his perfused chick-heart and his pendulum-toting wife – is a fascinating component of this story. If one can get past his disdainful social theories, he’s a fairly likable guy. But ultimately the importance of this book revolves around Lindbergh’s personal journey from a belief system that only advanced white people should procreate and benefit from immortality (not the “wrong” kind of white people such as journalists and, presumably, those who wear Ed Hardy shirts un-ironically) to the notion that all humans are inherently evil to, finally, the concept that only naked primitives and Monkey-eating Eagles are worthy of this earth… a fairly predictable transformation certainly. ( )