About the Author

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.

Reviews

"Fascinating and deeply disturbing. I love this book. -- Simon Winchester (bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman)David M. Friedman's The Immortalists reads like riveting historical fiction but raises provocative questions about the shape of the future. -- Ron Rosenbaum, best-selling author of The Shakespeare Wars and Explaining Hitler"Difficult to put down...this is the book to read." -- New York Times

Friedman (A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis) brings into detailed focus for the first time the relationship between famed aviator Charles Lindbergh and the Noble Prize-winning French surgeon Alexis Carrel. Driven by a desire to cure his ailing sister-in-law, Elizabeth Morrow, Lindbergh contacted Carrel in 1930 for the purpose of developing an artificial heart. What follows is the story of a world-changing friendship and scientific endeavor. Unrevealed to the public until now is that the two men had a more ambitious plan-to achieve immortality. Here Friedman elaborates on an absorbing aspect of their relationship-how belief in scientific progress and the quest for immortality fed their view for eugenics, all of which would collide into the harsh reality of Nazism. Friedman offers an insightful look into Lindbergh's mind by providing motivations for his admiration of the Nazis, and then, in contrast, his personal reckoning with the war, which resulted in his disillusionment with scientific progress and a redefinition of the meaning of immortality. Recommended for the science and history collections of academic and public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/07.]-Scott Vieira, Johnson Cty. Lib., KS Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

"Fascinating and deeply disturbing. I love this book. -- Simon Winchester (bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman)David M. Friedman's The Immortalists reads like riveting historical fiction but raises provocative questions about the shape of the future. -- Ron Rosenbaum, best-selling author of The Shakespeare Wars and Explaining Hitler"Difficult to put down...this is the book to read." -- New York Times