From one of America's most acclaimed biographers, here at last is the definitive life of one of the most legendary, controversial and enigmatic figures in American history - Charles A. Lindbergh, the first solo pilot to cross the Atlantic non-stop from New Yrok to Paris, in 1927.
The astonishing press attention Lindbergh recieved subsequent to his awe-inspiring flight made him the first modern media superstar, condemned to be deified and demonized many times over in his lifetime. The most celebrated man of his day - a romantic symbol of the new aviation age - Lindbergh seemed to be living a charmed life until tragedy struck in 1932, when his twenty-month-old son, the 'Lindbergh baby', was kidnapped and later found dead. The unbearable public hysteria generated by the trial of the assumed kidnapper forced Lindbergh into exile - to England and France. During several pre-war visits to Germany, his facination with the Nazi regime resulted in his receiveing a decoration from the Third Reich, and upon his return to America in 1939 he became the leading spokesman of the America First isolationist movement, challenging President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the bitter debate over American intervention into the Second World War. Public opinion, at last, turned against him.
