The Spirit of St. Louis (book)

3–178), Lindbergh describes the latter days of his career as an airmail pilot and presents his account of conceiving, planning, and executing the building of the Spirit of St. Louis aircraft.He describes the many challenges he faced, including getting financial backing, constructing an aircraft that could carry the necessary fuel and still fly, and completing the project within several months—other pilots were racing to achieve the first solo trans-Atlantic flight and win the $25,000 Orteig Prize.181–492), Lindbergh gives a detailed hour-by-hour account of his 33-hour solo flight above the Atlantic and northern Europe that began in the early morning hours of May 21, 1927.[2] Lindbergh hired a literary agent, George T. Bye, who negotiated a serialization deal and motion-picture rights for $100,000 from The Saturday Evening Post.Work began in 1938, 11 years after the last event described in the book, so Lindbergh needed to rely on memory for his early drafts; few detailed records were available to him.[3] Prior to the publication of The Spirit of St. Louis on September 14, 1953, Lindbergh presented an advance copy in August 1953 to Carl B. Allen, who had read the manuscript and provided criticism and suggestions (he is included in the Acknowledgements).But this is far more than that; this is a frank and fascinating autobiography that destroys the myth of the phlegmatic, nerveless airman impervious to doubt and to the uncertainties that plague lesser mortals.Lindbergh had his moments of doubt and fear, when fourteen hours out of Roosevelt Field ice appeared on the wings of his plane and when black thunderheads loomed ahead.His book is written in the present tense, a happy choice, for somehow this style sustains the tension of the flight and enables the reader to feel himself a stowaway aboard the plane, sharing the dangers, the uncertainties and the eventual triumph."[6]The Spirit of St. Louis continued to be reprinted in a number of editions with a variety of different covers with the copyright being renewed in 1981 by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.The film version of the book was released in 1957, directed by Billy Wilder, and starring James Stewart as Charles Lindbergh.