For a man whose mind ran to scientific discovery, courageous endeavor, and energetic living, it would not be expected to find him a skilled writer as well. These journal entries written between the years of 1938 and 1945 were kept intentionally by Lindbergh to record a time he recognized would be of great historical importance. The early sections on prewar Europe, prewar United States and his work in the Ford plants would be tedious were it not for the sharp writing and the descriptions of events not open to many. His and Anne's opposition to the war give us a window into the America First organization and their much-criticised activites to keep us neutral. But it is Lindbergh's Pacific adventures where his writing shines combining his great love for flying, an observant eye and photographic memory. "I looked down on a mountain stream cascading throught the jungle--a raveled white thread on a cloth of green--the heart of the New Guinea jungle, not even charted on the map until this war started, an area known only to natives and explorers, the objective of long, hazardous and carefully organized expeditions. Now we were flying over it as a matter of course, oblivious to the hardships and the romance, the solitude and the beauty of those jungle-covered mountains--four Lightnings cruising swiftly toward the enemy bases of Jefman and Samate--carrying violent death through the sky on the opposite side of the world from home." It was here in the Pacific that Lindbergh showed an obsession with what he found to be the unfair treatment of Japanese prisoners. Wherever he traveled over the Pacific he seemed to inquire of stories of mistreatment and torture. While in Europe a few weeks after the armistice he made a startling, self-revealing comparison of the sights in a newly liberated concentration camp to what he saw of our troops in the Pacific. A very complex, talented man who sincerely feared that the war would bring an end to Western Civilization, but once it began did all he could to help the airmen with the multiple problems arising from a hasty construction schedule at the beginning of the war. An absorbing 1000 page volume. ( )