Picture this, right? It's the summer of 1927.
A very wild summer. Oh, absolutely. Because you've
got this 25 -year -old former US airmail pilot
named Charles Lindbergh, and he has just pulled
off the literal impossible. The first solo, nonstop
transatlantic flight, New York to Paris. Exactly.
And, you know, because of that, the entire world
is just completely obsessed with him. Every newspaper
is screaming his name. Right. And here's where
it gets interesting behind closed doors. He is
locked in this bitter, fiercely contested battle
with his own publisher. Right, which is just
this stunning contrast. You know, you have a
public ravenous for a hero and a media machine
desperate to package him. But the hero himself
is like actively fighting the very machine that's
trying to build him up. OK, let's unpack this.
because this is the core of our deep dive today.
Yeah, it's a fascinating story. It really is.
We are thrilled to have you, the listener, with
us today as we dive into the provided source
text. Our mission here is to explore the frantic,
highly dramatic production of one of history's
fastest and most successful autobiographies.
The book We. Yes, We. It is a total masterclass
in how sudden overnight success is managed, pappaged,
and sometimes, well, fiercely protected by the
creator. To really get the sheer velocity of
this story, we kind of need to ground ourselves
in the basic timeline first. Right, set the stage
for us. Just imagine a 1920s aviation hangar,
you know. blueprints of a single -engine monoplane
scattered around, old telegrams, maybe a vintage
typewriter in the corner. That's the vibe. I
love that visual. So the historic flight itself
took place on May 20th and 21st, 1927. And the
custom -built Ryan monoplane, right? The spirit
of St. Louis. That's the precipitating event.
But here is the timeline that is just staggering.
Just 57 days after he landed in Paris. Wait,
57 days? 57 days. On July 27, 1927, his auto—
biography, We, was officially published by G
.P. Putnam's sons. That turnaround time is almost
impossible to comprehend. I mean, from stepping
out of a cockpit in Paris running on zero sleep
to having a fully published hardcover autobiography
on bookstore shelves. Yeah, and Putnam's was
a major New York publishing house. It was run
by George P. Putnam, who, side note, actually
later promoted and married Amelia Earhart. Oh,
right. So the guy clearly knew exactly how to
capitalize on an aviation frenzy. He absolutely
did. But to really understand this book, we first
have to look at the massive gap between what
the public thought they were buying and what
Lindbergh actually wrote. Right, the expectations
versus reality. Exactly. And that disconnects,
it starts before you even open the cover. It
starts with the title itself. Just that one word,
we -e, capital W, capital E. Yeah, and the publisher
was totally steering the narrative there. Without
Lindbergh's knowledge, they chose that title.
Which is wild to me. Right. And on the dust jacket,
the publisher claimed that this flying pronoun
referred to a, and I quote, spiritual partnership
between Lindbergh and his airplane. Wow. They
were really painting this poetic, romantic picture
of man and machine, you know, braving the icy
transatlantic night together as a single soul.
It sounds profound, sure, great marketing, but
Lindbergh absolutely hated it. I bet. He wasn't
that guy at all. Not even a little. When he used
the word we, he wasn't talking about the airplane
having a soul. He meant himself and his financial
backers in St. Louis who literally funded the
trip. Which is just so literal. And this is the
most glaring irony of the entire source material,
honestly. The public is buying this book. They
are ravenous for the gripping, inside story of
the most famous flight in human history. And
the book is 318 pages long. Right. But take a
guess, how many pages actually cover the legendary
flight? Well, it's shockingly low. 18. Just 18
pages out of 318. Pages 213 to 230, that's it.
It's crazy. I was thinking about this. And it's
like buying a highly anticipated cookbook from
a world famous baker, right? Okay, yeah. You
rush it home, you crack it open, and 90 % of
the book is just about the baker's childhood,
their time in school, some random jobs they had.
Right, right. And there is only a single page
tucked at the very back containing the actual
recipe you bought the book for. That is a perfect
analogy, because the rest of A .E. is entirely
about his early life, his stunt flying, and four
emergency parachute jumps he had to make. And
he didn't even write a full book about the actual
flight until 1953, right? The Spirit of St. Luke.
Exactly. 26 years later. But back in 1927, to
fill out this volume, the publisher had to heavily
pad it out. How did they manage that? They included
an impassioned foreword by the U .S. Ambassador
to France, Myron T. Herrick. And then they tacked
on this massive 85 -page appendix by an editor
named Fitzhugh Green. 85 pages. Yeah, just describing
the world's reaction to the flight parades and
stuff. What's fascinating here is how the critics
picked up on this disconnect immediately. The
source text highlights a review by Horace Green
that perfectly captures it. Oh, yes. He noted
that Lindbergh had, quote, no imagination in
the personal sense, but great imagination in
the mechanical sense. I love that phrasing. Yeah,
he said Lindbergh's mind works without embroidery.
Without embroidery. That right there is the pivotal
phrase for this entire deep dive. It really is.
Because a mind that works without embroidery
is going to violently clash with a publishing
industry that is built entirely on embroidery.
Precisely. Because if you read those 18 pages,
they aren't sweeping prose about the human spirit.
They read like a technical flight log. Altitude
readings? Fuel consumption. Yeah. Ice forming
on the struts. Raw data. Which leads us to the
whole ghostwriter rebellion. Right. Because if
you've got 57 days to publish a book, And your
author writes like a flight manual. You don't
wait for him to draft his memoirs. You manufacture
it. Exactly. While Lindbergh is busy being feeded
in Washington, New York and St. Louis, Putnam
hires a New York Times reporter, J. Carlisle
MacDonald, to ghostwrite the book. And MacDonald
actually had incredible access to him, didn't
he? He did. He interviewed Lindbergh in Paris
and he even traveled with him on the six -day
trip back to the U .S. on the Navy cruiser USS
Memphis. So Putnam sets MacDonald up in a house
in Rye, New York. with a whole staff of secretaries.
Just to churn out this manuscript. And they did.
A full galley proof was ready in just two weeks.
Two weeks. A publisher's dream. But when they
slide this manuscript across the desk, Lindbergh
reads it. and he just completely rejects it.
He felt it was cheaply done and riddled with
factual errors. And he hated the tone, too. He
said it was written in a false, fawning tone.
Yeah. Decades later, he called it a smarmy, awestruck
style. Poor imitation of Will Rogers. OK, wait.
Let me play devil's advocate here for a second.
Sure, go for it. We have to consider his reality
in that exact moment. He's 25. He has a guaranteed
instant bestseller handed to him on a silver
platter. Right. The work is done. Exactly. All
he has to do is shrug, sign his name, and collect
a fortune. By rejecting it... and delaying publication,
wasn't he taking a massive risk? A huge risk.
I mean, the public is notoriously fickle. Wasn't
it incredibly dangerous to assume the world would
just patiently wait for him while he moved on
to the next shiny thing? That is the logical
assumption for anyone seeking fame, definitely.
Right. But if we connect this to the bigger picture,
fame wasn't his primary motivator. Absolute accuracy
was. Because of his military training, right?
Exactly. The text points directly to this. In
the book, Lindberg credits his 1924 to 1925 U
.S. Army flight training at Brooks and Kelly
fields as the key to his focused, goal -oriented
nature. So that military discipline really shaped
him. It did. The Army -trained aviator just couldn't
put his name on something inaccurate, even for
easy money. To him, a factual error in a book
was like a loose bolt on an airplane. It's fundamentally
unsafe. I love that. So he rejects the easy path.
But he is still contractually obligated to deliver
a book by July. Right. Putnam had already started
hyping up a July release. Which leads to this
great moment with the editor, Fitzhugh Green.
Green basically tells him, look, it is your book.
We wouldn't want to publish it if it weren't.
Basically saying, if you don't like it, you write
it. Exactly. And this triggers an astonishing
feat of solo endurance from Lindberg. It really
mirrors his solo flight. He drops completely
out of the public eye, right? Yeah, he retreats
to Falaise, which was the Long Island mansion
of this aviation promoter, Harry Frank Guggenheim.
And he just locks himself away. Working in complete
solitude. He painstakingly re -rates the entire
book in longhand in less than three weeks. Less
than three weeks, by hand. The mechanics of this
are just fascinating to me. He used blue ink,
a fountain pen, and plain 8x10 white bond paper.
Very specific tools. Yeah, and because he's under
contract to hit 40 ,000 words, he was actually
counting his words. at the top of every single
handwritten page to make sure he hit the limit.
Doing the math on the margins. Exactly. Outside,
he's a global phenomenon and inside, he's just
doing long division to hit a word count. It is
the ultimate testament to his work ethic and
the release ended up being a commercial juggernaut
anyway. Oh totally. The stats are wild. It sold
over 190 ,000 copies in just the first six weeks.
At $2 .50 each. Right. Plus they did a limited
edition of a thousand autographed copies for
$25 each. Which is a ton of money back then.
Oh absolutely. And it sold over 650 ,000 copies
in the first year alone. Earned him like a quarter
of a million dollars in royalties. But the book
was really just phase one. Phase two was the
mega tour. Yes. Sponsored by the Daniel Guggenheim
Fund. Lindbergh takes the spirit of St. Louis
on this unprecedented three month tour of the
U .S. From July 20th to October 23rd, 1927. And
the scale of this is just unmatched. Do you have
the numbers on this right? I do. It is staggering.
He visited 82 cities. Wow. landed in all 48 states,
delivered 147 speeches, and rode 1 ,290 miles
in parades. That sounds exhausting. And here's
the kicker. He was seen by an estimated 30 million
Americans. Okay, here's where it gets really
interesting for me. 30 million Americans. That
was a quarter of the entire U .S. population
at the time. One in four people saw him. It's
the 1920s equivalent of going viral globally
and then immediately launching a massive, perfectly
executed 48 -state stadium tour to sell your
merch. It really is. I mean, no author before
or since has ever had a promotional tour quite
like this. And we have to look at the synergy
between the book and the tour here. The book
wasn't just an autobiography to him. What was
it then? A manifesto. Basically. It was a highly
calculated tool to achieve his stated life goal,
which was the advancement and promotion of commercial
aeronautics. Because before Lindbergh, the public
thought flying was just for daredevils. Exactly.
Barnstormers, stunt pilots. It was seen as incredibly
dangerous. Lindbergh used this book and this
massive tour as a massive product demonstration.
Showing that commercial aviation could be safe
and reliable. Right. He arrived on schedule day
after day in all 48 states without crashing.
Proving that an airplane is a viable way to travel
from point A to point B. And it worked. The tour
forced cities to build airports just so he could
land. It basically jump started the modern airline
industry. So what does this all mean when we
bring it back to the text? The story of we is
really a profound testament to an individual's
obsession with control and accuracy from his
flat out rejection of a smarmy ghostwritten manuscript
to his meticulous handwritten pages counted one
by one in blue ink right down to the grueling
logistics of an 82 city tour. He was as precise
with his brand as he was with his airplane. Exactly.
And I think for you, our listener, there is a
really relevant takeaway here. We live in an
era heavily saturated with AI -generated content,
ghostwritten celebrity memoirs, and manicured
PR statements. It's everywhere. It is. But the
story of Wee proves that true authenticity, a
mind that works without embroidery, even if it
delays the product and lacks poetic flair, it
ultimately resonates much longer and louder with
the public. I couldn't agree more. You think
about this before we wrap up. What if Lindbergh
had just sighed? and accepted that first ghostwritten
manuscript. Oh, man. The public would have absorbed
a totally manufactured awshucks version of this
man as historical fact. They wouldn't have known
any better. Exactly. It really makes you wonder
how many other historical icons we only know
through the false, fawning tone of a ghostwriter
whose draft was never thrown in the trash. That
is a very unsettling thought. Just something
to chew on. But that is all the time we have
for today. Thank you so much for joining us on
this deep dive into 1927. It's been a blast.
It really has. Keep questioning the narratives
out there and we will see you next time.