The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever

by David M. Friedman

Book Overview

He was one of the most famous men of the twentieth century, the subject of best-selling biographies and a hit movie, as well as the inspiration for a dance step - the Lindy Hop - he himself was too shy to try. But for all the attention lavished on Charles Lindbergh, one story has remained untold until now: his macabre scientific collaboration with Dr. Alexis Carrel. Together this oddest of couples - one a brilliant surgeon turned social engineer,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 006052815X
• ISBN13: 9780060528157
• Release Date: August 2007
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

An excellent book, but keep it in perspective.

The first half of this book is superb in detailing the development of the organ perfusion pump and related scientific breakthroughs made by Dr. Carrel and Mr. Lindbergh in the 1930s. In this part, Mr. Friedman relies mostly on his own research. The second half describes the sad fate of Mr Carrel, who was unfairly accused of collaboration, and the unique fate of Mr Lindbergh, who was demonized during the neutrality debate in 1939-41 (and still is). Here Friedman draws heavily on the work of A. Scott Berg, whose biography of Lindbergh is fair but obviously incomplete, and on Max Wallace's The American Axis, which is not fair. Carrel, a brilliant scientist with controversial opinions, in now mostly forgotten, but Lindbergh certainly isn't. There is a vast chasm between Lindbergh's reputation in the aviation community and his vilification among the chattering classes. In the former, he is esteemed not so much for his rather elementary 1927 flight, but for his subsequent contributions, not least flying fifty combat missions as a civilian, and developing engine management techniques which continue to be taught and have probably saved many lives. In the latter domain, Lindbergh is a piñata, but an unusually enduring one who keeps getting hung up and whacked for the views he is supposed to have held. Friedman is in the second domain, but his approach is new in looking at the Carrel-Lindbergh collaboration. Anti-Lindberghists are faced with a terrible dilemma. It is impossible to examine the pilot's work, utterances, and voluminous writings without concluding that he was an earnest, well-meaning, humanitarian, and patriotic person who made substantial contributions in every field he entered, and whose main fault was political dyslexia. To get around this, anti-Lindberghism must extrapolate and exaggerate. Of course, the media simply lied, and the writer Philip Roth, borrowing from the tactics of the authors of the Chronicles of the Elders, writes a whole parallel history in his recent The Plot against America. In contrast, Friedman is honest, but spins some facts against the flier. The blood libel against Lindbergh - that he was a racist, Hitler-loving, anti-Semitic eugenicist - is now such a shibboleth that it's risky to set the facts straight. Lindbergh had nothing against Jews, but he was worried about the power of the Jewish lobby over American foreign policy. In a peculiar statement such as "it's good for a country to have some Jews but not too many" one senses a puzzled mechanic trying to adjust the mixture so that the engine will run smoothly. In warning about the Lobby, he said what everybody knows. Friedman parrots Berg in countering that only a few percent of the total media is Jewish-owned, but everyone can see that is an artful evasion. On the other hand, that power is perfectly legitimate, and Lindbergh was clearly wrong to suggest that a Mr Goldberg's opinion is less "American" than a Mr Lindberg's. He was completely mystified by

America's Faulty Hero

Careful textbooks in my home state, Minnesota, portray Charles Lindbergh as an "isolationist" opponent to US participation in World War II. After all, he was a hero - OUR hero - a Swedish American from our state. Author David Friedman, with quite thorough evidence, portrays Lindbergh differently, as an admirer of Hitler and Hitler's Germany, who wrote to his American friend that Hitler "is undoubtedly a great man, and I believe he has done much for the German people. He is a fanatic in many ways, and anyone can see that there is a certain amount of fanaticism in Germany today... On the other hand, Hitler has accomplished results...which could hardly have been accomplished without some fanaticism." Friedman explains: 'For Lindbergh, Germany seemed everything that America was not and probably could never be: a country composed of one virile, morally and ethically pure race committed to science, and united in a vision of national greatness. That such unity came at teh cost of democratic institutions, individual rights, and a free press didn't alienate him. Democracy was anoble idea, Lindbergh believed, but the reality was quite different...in the United States, where social and political equality, together with a free press...produced a climate of degeneracy... Only a strong visionary, and yes, even fascist, leader was best equipped to restore moral order to western civilization.' In Lindbergh's own words, from an article he published in Reader's Digest in 1939: Aviation "is a tool especially shaped for Western hands, a scientific art which others copy in a mediocre fashion, another barrier between the teeming millions of Asia and the Grecian inheritance of Europe -- one of the priceless possessions which permit the White race to live at all in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown.... We, the heirs of European culture, are on the verge of a disastrous war, a war within our own family of nations... Our civilization depends on a united strength among ourselves, on a Western Wall of race and arms which can hold back either a Genghis Khan or an infiltration of inferior blood..." Aviation, by the way, was in Lindbergh's opinion the Third Reich's strong suite; neither England nor the USA could match the Luftwaffe in technology or skill, as he consistently testified to the Congress and war departments of the USA. Friedman documents Lindbergh's enthusiasm for "social Darwinist" eugenics, his anti-Semitism and overall racism, his contempt for the rule of rules, and his indifference to dialogue and compromise. In all of this ideological extremism, however, Lindbergh had a mentor, one of the few humans he respected as his own equal or even superior, the French Nobel-winning Dr. Alexis Carrel, the WW1 discoverer of battlefield antisepsis and the first developer of techniques for suturing arteries. Through much of the 1930s, Lindbergh trained himself in biology and worked side by side with Carrel to develop instruments and methods to maintain the life

A clear look at the time Lindbergh and Carrel worked together on organ transplantation

This book centers on the period of Charles Lindbergh's life when he was working with Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Carrel had won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1912 for his work on suturing blood vessels. He had also been lauded for his method of disinfecting wounds with chlorine (this was decades prior to the development and use of antibiotics). They were both famous men and, when introduced, they found they had many interests and views in common. Lindbergh's sister-in-law, Elizabeth Morrow, had a very weak heart that was going to shorten her lifespan and he felt medicine should have a way of replacing worn out organs just as he replaced parts in an airplane engine. Carrel was the leading authority in that field at that time and their work together is the central story of this book. During their years of working together, Lindbergh designed and developed the world's first perfusion pump that allowed entire organs to be kept alive for extended periods without becoming infected. Both Lindbergh and Carrel were interested in pursuing an extended lifespan and rejected the inevitability of death. Of course, the popular press misunderstood what they were after and what Lindbergh had developed. It was regularly called a glass heart or an artificial heart, but it wasn't. Lindbergh and Carrel also shared similar views on the superiority of the European or White race and the necessity of preserving and defending it. They both saw the coming war in Europe as a disaster that might go far beyond the losses and devastation of the Great War (World War I, we call it). Yes, Lindbergh favored Germany over Britain, but not for the reasons usually ascribed to him. Yes, he and Carrel viewed Jews as a separate race and they talked of good and bad Jews. However, they also helped Jews including a former assistant who went on to a brilliant medical career. Carrel and his wife were also mystics and impressed the Lindberghs and many others in ways that would embarrass anyone of a scientific reputation today. While I don't want to be seen as defending Lindbergh's views at this time in his life, it does have to be noted that eugenics was in the air and various strains of it were advocated by many famous people. Many of these advocates of this now discredited movement still have a solid reputation today (even if their views on eugenics are kept hush hush in popular discussions). And one can still hear eugenics arguments made today, but it is never called by that name. Essentially, Lindbergh saw Germany's manufacturing efficiency, engineering supremacy, and military discipline as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. He did not want the United States drawn in to a war that would leave Europe vulnerable to an expansionist communist movement. Carrel shared his anti-war views. However, once war came, Carrel went back to France to help as best as he could with his medical abilities. His reputation was smeared and

Brilliant analysis of two brilliant minds (perhaps three)

Never having read a real biography of Lindberg, and never having heard of Alexis Carrel, this book introduced me to a new universe of thought. Friedman is empathetic and compassionate when he describes the tragic (as in Greek tragedy, a flaw that dooms greatness) shortcomings of men he obviously very much admires. Carrel and Lindberg thought of themselves, with some justification, as Olympians. Carrel didn't suffer fools gladly - or at all - but he comes across as a far more human being than the driven, dispassionate, aloof Lindberg. It's easy to understand Lindberg's fascination with Nazism - all that counts is getting the trains to run on time, no matter whose bodies lie across the tracks. Friedman paints two very complex pictures of 'great men', and great men they truly were, and their close personal and professional relationships. Friedman also portrays Ann Morrow Lindberg as a brilliant although self-doubting artist of great sensitivity. Reading of Lindberg's treatment of his wife reinforces the general portrait of a cold, humorless, obsessive tyrant. Finally, the author gives the reader enough detail to understand the what, how and why of the Carrel/Lindberg quest for immortality through organ replacement without ever losing me in a flood of technical minutia. One of the most fascinating tales I've ever read and extremely well told.

Great...but how does he know?

I enjoyed this book a lot, having learned much more about Lindbergh than I ever knew, especially his apparent eventual repudiation of eugenics and the Nazis and his new-found commitment to environmentalism. But how does Friedman know about all the thoughts Lindbergh had as he reassesses his values in light of particular experiences? The notes at the back, which provide references for particular lines of many pages, in many cases do not present the evidence that Friedman learned all of this from Lindbergh's journals or other sources. Ths was a problem for me - a kind of imaginary mind-reading that I became somewhat skeptical of. So I considered giving the book just four stars, but, heck, it was a really good read!