The wartime journals of Charles A. Lindbergh

These journals cover the years 1938 to 1945. In that disastrous stretch of time Charles Lindbergh responded to crises with active intellectual curiosity and extraordinary insight. He studied European aviation. He sought to alert leaders to the military imbalance and the lack of preparation among the Western nations. He made a dedicated endeavor to keep the United States out of a war that he believed seriously threatened to destroy Western civilization. He indicated his awareness of the harsh realities that awaited a stricken and shattered postwar Europe.
In all this variety and range of experience there was an underlying concern that the vital impulse --- that elan vital which continuously propels all life toward more complex and more advanced structures in the universe --- not be thwarted or set back by the forces of destruction.