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Summary
Summary
Few people know that Anne Morrow Lindbergh was an accomplished and innovative pilot in her own right. In fact, she was one of the defining figures of American aviation, a bright and adventurous woman who helped to pioneer air routes, traveled around the world, and came to be adored by the American public. In this revealing biography, author and pilot Kathleen C. Winters vividly recreates the adventure and excitement of many of Anne's early flights, including never-before-revealed flight details from the Lindbergh archives. An intimate portrayal of a remarkable woman, Anne Morrow Lindbergh also offers a dazzling picture of the exciting and dangerous early years of aviation's Golden Age.
Author Notes
Kathleen C. Winters is an aviation historian as well as a certificated pilot and former flight instructor. Her articles have appeared in Woman Pilot, Aviation for Women , and Soaring magazines, and she has been a featured speaker at the Lindbergh Symposium in Ft. Myers, Florida. She lives in Minnesota.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This biography focuses on Lindbergh's flying career, which she embarked upon after her 1929 marriage to Charles Lindbergh, already a hero for his historic nonstop transatlantic flight two years earlier. Drawing on an admirable array of research, aviation historian Winters documents how Charles trained his young wife to serve as copilot, navigator and radio operator on their long pioneering flights. In their new plane, Sirius, the Lindberghs set a speed record for flying from coast to coast. Winters details their flight to China and a five-month global survey flight that would advance commercial air travel, adventures that Anne (1906-2001) wrote about in North to the Orient and Listen, the Wind. It's clear that Anne fell in love with flying as well as with her husband, a driven, demanding man. Charles insisted that she fly while pregnant and argued for greater aviation challenges as their family grew. Though this is not a comprehensive biography, Winters deals briefly with the well-known aspects of Anne's life including the kidnapping and murder of the Lindberghs' first son and Charles's flirtation with Nazism. Anne's important role in early aviation has not been treated as extensively elsewhere. B&w photos, maps. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Although numerous books have been written about Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Winters rightfully asserts that none has addressed her aviation achievements. With the assistance of Lindbergh's family, Winters is determined to show that Anne's contribution to her husband's aviation exploits was noteworthy in its own right and wrongfully eclipsed by his greater fame. She was one of the earliest female pilots, as well as the first American female glider pilot, and a radio operator who achieved numerous accolades for her service during the couple's long-distance flights. Winters shows in great detail that Lindbergh accomplished this under the glare of an unremitting spotlight, and in the company of an often-demanding spouse. That the author is able to bring something new to the Lindbergh story is impressive, and she does it through both technical explanations of Lindbergh's accomplishments and Anne's own words about her flying exploits, marriage, and writing. In Winters' beautifully written biography, Anne Morrow Lindbergh emerges as a more complete and relatable character then ever before, and an aviator long overdue for respect. --Colleen Mondor Copyright 2006 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh leaving Roosevelt Field on Long Island in 1929. ON July 27, 1931, Charles A. Lindbergh and his young wife picked up an airplane at College Point, Queens, after it had been equipped with pontoons from the Edo factory. Contemporary news media were there in force. Mrs. Lindbergh overheard a radio reporter tell his microphone she was wearing "a leather flying helmet and leather coat, and high leather flying boots." Mrs. Lindbergh examined herself: she was wearing a cotton blouse, lightweight riding breeches and rubber sneakers. With this and a thousand similar anecdotes, Kathleen C. Winters, in "Anne Morrow Lindbergh: First Lady of the Air," shows why the Lindberghs all their lives held the pestiferous press in loathing; it did not all start with the kidnapping in 1932. Winters's short book, both pointed and modest, is concerned almost entirely with Anne as a figure in aviation history. In May 1927 she had had to ask chattery classmates at Smith College, "Who is this Lindy?" In December she met Lindbergh in Mexico City, where her very rich father, Dwight Morrow, was the United States ambassador. She went all googly in a week. "My little embroidery beribboned world is smashed," she told her diary. The next year she was engaged to this Lindy, and in 1929 she was the wife of a leading candidate for most famous man in the world. Anne's education as a pilot proceeded in the intervals of flying with Charles on route surveys for budding American airline companies and attending exhibitions in which he often starred. In 1931 Charles designated her as radio operator, part-time navigator and relief pilot on an ambitious route survey for Pan Am: New York to Japan and China, thence westward around the world. Aircraft radio in 1931 was still primitive. Few ground stations, and few aircraft, had radiotelephony. A flying operator had to send and receive in Morse code and transcribe the results while changing tuning coils in the set and adjusting a long trailing antenna to suit the frequency in use; altogether a four-handed job, and one a pilot alone would have found overwhelming. The Lindberghs' Lockheed Sirius was a low-wing monoplane of special elegance even for the streamlined 1930s, with tandem cockpits aft of the wing and fuel tanks for 2,000 miles at a pop. Then as now, the shortest route to Tokyo lay through Alaska. The Lindberghs took 10 days from Ottawa to Nome, much of it over the population vacuum of northern Canada, mile after mile of flat, wet nothing. At Baker Lake, trappers told Anne she was the first white woman ever seen there. At Point Barrow, a Scottish whaler told the Lindberghs he had not been "outside" for 40 years; he had never seen a telephone or an automobile. The plane reached Tokyo after four weeks, much of it absorbed in landings forced by impenetrable weather, usually followed by Charles's comforting (and often implausible) assertions that they had never been in serious danger while descending through cloud and fog. In China the plane was damaged in a turnover, and a cable informed them that Anne's father was dead; the Lindberghs returned to North America by ship. Charles's report to Pan Am made it clear that the technology for a polar route was far from ready. In 1933 they undertook another survey, exploring the Arctic route from New York to Europe. The ensuing report was encouraging, but airline service over the Atlantic did not arrive till 1939, just in time to be suspended by the war. Anne had always aspired to be a writer, and in her 1935 best seller, "North to the Orient," produced a sparkling narrative that delighted both Sinclair Lewis and Alexander Woollcott, and is deservedly still in print. As a writer she would prosper, but as a crew for Charles she seems to have tired of being always and everywhere "good for a woman." Winters, an aviation historian and a licensed pilot, reports that Charles whistled when he wanted her attention, began to disappear and return without prior announcement, and lectured his family on such evils as white bread and television. It must have been trying, and she never renewed her pilot's license after letting it lapse in 1937. Many guys like me, who instinctively moon over airplanes but had to learn to moon over gender equity, are ready to admire Anne as an aviator. For a woman, how good was she? She was never a self-starter like Amelia Earhart, but neither did she disappear at sea. In a pursuit that offers endless opportunities for fatal mistakes, she made no fatal mistakes. Charles could have had almost any pilot in the world for his second seat, so his choice is a ringing endorsement, good enough for me. Tom Ferrell is a former staff editor at The Times.
Choice Review
The author of this cliche-ridden biography of Anne Morrow Lindbergh has done scant justice to a subject of extraordinary complexity of both character and talent who had to struggle to emerge from a shy, withdrawn early life. It was a life eventually filled by all the elements of drama and tragedy. Anne Lindbergh deserves a more vivid and artistically drawn biography, such as she herself would have been capable of writing. An entirely different matter is that aviation historians and buffs will have no trouble pointing out many errors of both technical and factual substance. The reader wishing to learn about Anne Lindbergh and her marriage to Charles Augustus Lindbergh, and willing to read a long serious book, can fall back on Joyce Milton's Loss of Eden, published more than a decade ago (CH, Jun'93, 30-5552). This volume, not even referring to Milton's book in its notes and sources, cannot be recommended. Summing Up: Not recommended. M. Levinson formerly, University of Washington
Kirkus Review
Pilot and aviation historian Winters focuses on the neglected subject of Mrs. Lindbergh's work as copilot, navigator and radio operator on pioneering flights exploring air routes for the infant airline industry. At the time of her death, in 2001, Anne Morrow Lindbergh already seemed a figure from the yellowed headlines of the distant past. Her renown came early, with her 1929 marriage to the most celebrated hero of the 20th century. Its tragic second act included the most famous kidnapping/murder trial in U.S. history, but the bereaved mother recovered to write many bestselling books. Largely forgotten today, though publicly appreciated in her time, is her role as one of the early and important women in the almost entirely male world of aviation. Winters covers Morrow's sheltered early life as part of a wealthy, service-minded family (her father was ambassador to Mexico at the time she met Charles Lindbergh) and touches, sometimes more than briefly, on her marriage, the kidnapping and her literary career. But the author devotes the bulk of this narrative to meticulously tracking the many flights Anne and Charles made on behalf of Pan Am. Her husband proudly identified her as "crew," but Anne was careful never to claim too much on behalf of her aviation exploits, even though they required undoubted skill and courage. She always maintained that for her, flying constituted first and foremost a refuge, helping to preserve the intimacy of a marriage subject to overwhelming public scrutiny. This makes her a tricky feminist icon, considered strictly as an aviator, and Winters, following her subject's lead, wisely never overstates the case. Anne's flying career ended in her early 30s. Near the close of her long life, after finally receiving numerous awards honoring her contributions to aviation's golden age, she did concede that her years spent flying were, perhaps, her "most feminist period." A perfectly calibrated tribute to an early heroine of the air. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Table of Contents
| List of Illustrations | p. ix |
| Permissions | p. xi |
| Acknowledgments | p. xiii |
| Prologue: The Magic of Flight | p. 1 |
| 1 A Walled Garden | p. 7 |
| 2 A Different Drummer | p. 27 |
| 3 A Whirlwind | p. 45 |
| 4 The Good Ship Anne | p. 61 |
| 5 A Challenge Met | p. 85 |
| 6 The Land of the Midnight Sun | p. 95 |
| 7 Into the Raging Yangtze | p. 107 |
| 8 A Time of Mourning | p. 117 |
| 9 An Enchanted Land | p. 137 |
| 10 Europe | p. 151 |
| 11 Africa and Beyond: Into the Unknown | p. 167 |
| 12 Acclaim | p. 177 |
| 13 The Artist Survives | p. 195 |
| Notes and Sources | p. 213 |
| Selected Bibliography | p. 229 |
| Index | p. 235 |
