American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and French surgeon Alexis Carrel worked together to advance the cause of eugenics, and someone has finally gotten around to writing about it. Here’s a New York Times review of the result, The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever, by David M. Friedman.

The two men first met when Lindberg came up with some ideas for fixing his sister-in-law’s damaged heart valve and was given an introduction to Carrel. Before long, the two men were exploring their mutual interests in eugenics and the perfection of the human species. As time wore on, Carrel became an outspoken advocate for the creation of a biological class system that would relegate the weak and sick to the lowest rungs of society, while Lindbergh became a vocal admirer of the order and precision of the Nazis. After the war, Lindbergh recreated himself as a conservationist.

… for a demonstration of the bizarrely particulate nature of human intelligence, which allows scientific brilliance and moral idiocy to thrive side by side, forget Jekyll, Hyde and Frankenstein: this is the book to read.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 10:02 am and is filed under books, celebrities, eugenics, history. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post