Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
His historic career as an aviator made Charles Lindbergh 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—that he himself was too shy to try. But for all the attention lavished on Lindbergh, one story has remained untold until now: his macabre scientific collaboration with Dr. Alexis Carrel. This oddest of couples—one a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning surgeon turned social engineer, the other a failed dirt farmer turned hero of the skies—joined forces in 1930 driven by a shared and secret dream: to conquer death and attain immortality.
Part Frankenstein, part The Professor and the Madman, and all true, The Immortalists is the remarkable story of how two men of prodigious achievement and equally large character flaws challenged nature's oldest rule, with consequences—personal, professional, and political—that neither man anticipated.
David M. Friedman
David M. Friedman has written for Esquire, GQ, and Rolling Stone, and was a reporter for New York Newsday and the Philadelphia Daily News. His first book, A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis, was published in more than a dozen countries. He lives in New York.
Read more from David M. Friedman
A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Immortalists
Related ebooks
The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880-1918 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Pestilence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Their Own Words 2: More letters from history Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLincoln Dreamt He Died: The Midnight Visions of Remarkable Americans from Colonial Times to Freud Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Dark Corners of the Lindbergh Kidnapping: Volume Iv Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why Spencer Perceval Had to Die: The Assassination of a British Prime Minister Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crime of the Century: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Canaris Conspiracy: The Secret Resistance to Hitler in the German Army Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ripper Suspect: The Secret Lives of Montague Druitt Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Freemasonry Threaded Through Mormonism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWho Has Buried the Dead?: From Stalin to Putin … The last great secret of World War Two Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Corners of the Lindbergh Kidnapping: Volume Iii Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Life With Helen: The Dean of the White House Press Corps Through Her Agent's Eyes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChurchill's Greatest Secret Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFramed in Monte Carlo: How I Was Wrongfully Convicted for a Billionaire's Fiery Death Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Martyn Rady's The Habsburgs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFailures of the Presidents: From the Whiskey Rebellion and War of 1812 to the Bay of Pigs and War in Iraq Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sites of European Antisemitism in the Age of Mass Politics, 1880–1918 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEssays of a Biologist Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKilling the Poormaster: A Saga of Poverty, Corruption, and Murder in the Great Depression Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5John Toland: Ireland's Forgotten Philosopher, Scholar ... and Heretic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hoax: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5the Plot to Kill John Wilkes Booth Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hypatia: The history of a most beautiful, most vertuous, most learned, and every way accomplish'd lady Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNew York to Paris? Charles Lindbergh Did It First! Biography of Famous People | Children's Biography Books Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Biography & Memoir For You
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, and Live Fearlessly Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jack Reacher Reading Order: The Complete Lee Child’s Reading List Of Jack Reacher Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Autism in Heels: The Untold Story of a Female Life on the Spectrum Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leonardo da Vinci Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: the heartfelt, funny memoir by a New York Times bestselling therapist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taste: My Life Through Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Eating Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mommie Dearest Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Ivy League Counterfeiter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diary of a Young Girl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Crack In Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Up From Slavery: An Autobiography: A True Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angela Davis: An Autobiography Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wiseguy: The 25th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Immortalists
11 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Most 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.”
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As 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.