The Immortalists, David M. Friedman
The Immortalists, David M. Friedman
List: $20.49 | Sale: $14.34
Club: $10.24

The Immortalists
Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever

Author: David M. Friedman

Narrator: Todd McLaren

Unabridged: 11 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/15/2007

Synopsis

The Immortalists is the fascinating story of the friendship and extraordinary scientific collaboration of two prodigious men: Charles Lindbergh, once the most famous person in the world, and Dr. Alexis Carrel, the Nobel Prize winner regarded by many as the most brilliant surgeon who ever lived.

Lindbergh and Carrel met not long after Lindbergh's "victory lap" around the world, which followed his historic solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927. Fueled by their shared goal to find a scientific path to life without death, they spent five years in Carrel's laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, where they secretly built a machine that could keep organs alive outside the bodies that created them. This device was the forerunner of today's artificial heart and heart-lung machine.

Although they obviously failed in their ultimate quest, Lindbergh and Carrel's experiments established them as two of the most ambitious thinkers in modern history, as well as unacknowledged pioneers of biotechnology.

About David M. Friedman

David M. Friedman has written for Esquire, GQ, Rolling Stone, Vogue, The Village Voice, and many other publications. He has also been a reporter for Newsday and the Philadelphia Daily News.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Betty on November 02, 2008

This is truly an amazing book. I found it very interesting right through. The story of Charles Lindbergh in particular is almost 3 separate lives, or maybe even 4, and we are taken through each part with the same thoroughness and attention to detail. Dr. Carrel as well lead a very fascinating life,......more

Goodreads review by Michael on June 22, 2009

As I don’t get out much, I knew exactly four things about Lindbergh (and nothing whatsoever about Carrel). I knew about his solo flight, I knew he solicited much of the funding for this from members of St Louis’s Noonsday Club, I had some fleeting knowledge about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, and I......more

Goodreads review by Nathan on July 29, 2008

Charles Lindbergh was a global celebrity, a daring aviator, and -- as this book surprisingly reveals -- an unsung mechanical genius, even from early childhood. Alexis Carrel was a brilliant surgeon, capable of sewing together tiny veins with his bare hands and naked eyes, who ran an eerie mad-scienc......more

Goodreads review by Arapahoe Libraries on March 23, 2009

Two unlikely partners, Charles Lindbergh, the famed aviator and the French Nobel Prize winner and surgeon, Dr. Alexis Carrel an early organ transplant specialist work together exploring ways to achieve human immortality. Their experiments were tied to a mutual desire to achieve a superior race, so,......more

Goodreads review by Elmwoodblues on November 30, 2018

If you are at all interested in early aviation, you know the name Charles Lindbergh. If you follow the geopolitics of 20th-Century America and World War II, same. Have an interest in the weird intersection of crime and celebrities, or New Jersey, or racism or isolationism or Hitler circa 1936? Like......more

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List