We

Title: "We"
Author: Charles A Lindbergh
Recommended by: Jason Hall (roundabout)

My friend Jason Hall works for Google (on google reader, which is amazing), and he had shared an item about Charles Lindbergh, and his involvement in making the artificial heart pump. And that got me thinking about how I don't know much about Lindbergh, so I went out and got his autobiography, and a book that was a series of essays on his life, by other authors.

I didn't know much about Lindbergh before this, so I'll recap: He was the first person to fly from New York to Paris, which he did in the Spirit of Saint Louis, in something like 33 hours, in 1927. That is what he's most famous for, but he also pushed aviation to where it is today by promoting air mail, convincing cities to build airports, and innovation in a number of aviation techniques. He was a very impressive person.

The book was pretty good, and Lindbergh comes across as very humble, but with strong passions. I was most impressed with how Lindbergh follows what he believes wholeheartedly, but accepts any situation he's put into and adapts to that new situation without being slowed by his previous way of thinking.

Another thing that seems so impressive is that Lindbergh unites humanity (that's where the title "We" comes from). Europeans and Americans are connected by his flight, and I wonder if there are many things left that can unite people (or even just Americans) as Lindbergh's flight did. I think landing a man on the moon provided a similar experience, but the number of people involved in that was huge, and it's hard to point to one person there as America's favorite son.

Recommendation: Biographies are always enlightening, no matter how the writing is, and I feel I've actually learned something for myself from the character of Charles A. Lindbergh. 8/10