Ambiguity best characterizes both the life of Charles Lindbergh and the contemporary and historical interpretations of him. The feat that thrust him into the public's sphere, his solo flight across the Atlantic in May 1927, was celebrated for being both a shining example of traditional American virtues of independence and courage as well as a symbol of modern industrial society. His post-flight life experienced the sympathy of the world during the kidnapping and murder of his infant son in 1932, as well as the scorn of many later in the 1930s and 1940s as he spoke out against American participation in World War II and promoted pro-Nazi and white supremacist views in his writings and speeches. Many have tried to reconcile the celebrated pilot with the outspoken racist, but few have done so as effectively as Christopher Gehrz in his religious biography of the famous, and infamous, aviator.

By examining the intellectual and spiritual life of Lindbergh, Gehrz paints a portrait of a person raised to think independently of institutions, curious about the world and human potential, and influenced by a variety of thinkers and ideas. Gehrz argues that a “spiritual but not religious” biography of Lindbergh not only helps explain the eclectic nature of his thoughts and positions, but also helps illuminate the increasing number of Americans described as “religious nones,” the roughly 30 percent of people “who don't affiliate with any particular religion or denomination but who are not atheists or even agnostics” (3). Lindbergh believed in God, but one more likely to be found in nature than in a church. By focusing on the spiritual influences on Lindbergh's life, from his parents, who were skeptical of institutional religion, to his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who joined him in his skepticism, to Nobel Prize–winning surgeon and biologist Alexis Carrel to Frank Buchman who founded Moral Re-Armament in 1938, Gehrz is able to describe the influence of each of these people, and many others, on the development of Lindbergh's thoughts about humanity and spirituality, though Lindbergh remained independent of any religious group or movement.

One group with whom Lindbergh did align himself was the America First Committee, the anti-interventionist group founded to lobby against American involvement in World War II and home to anti-Semitic, nativist, and pro-fascist advocates. Lindbergh's involvement stemmed from his belief that white men should not be at war with each other when the greater threat existed from nonwhite peoples. “Shall we submerge the spirit and life of Europe in the Yellow of Asia or the Black of Africa?” Lindbergh wrote in 1938 (112). For Lindbergh, the goal of mankind was not equality among men, but rather the quality of life one should aspire to attain. “In the years to come,” Gehrz writes, “he would insist again and again, and more publicly, that the ‘quality of life’ was more important than the equality of the living” (113). Reinforcing the eugenicist's view of a racial hierarchy of humanity, Lindbergh advocated white supremacy throughout his life, leading to his infamy.

While most of Lindbergh's biographers have emphasized the incongruity of the famed aviator and the unabashed racist, Gehrz is able to illustrate the continuities of thought throughout Lindbergh's lifetime as part of a larger effort to reconcile science and religion, an effort that led Lindbergh down many roads and led to his support for the aviation industry, medical technology, anti-interventionism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy, and environmental conservation. While these positions are seemingly inconsistent, Gehrz demonstrates how they are all, in some way, connected though the ideas and experiences of Lindbergh, while recognizing that he cannot explain all the inconsistencies of Lindbergh's life, such as the fact of his extramarital affairs and paternity of children with three different women besides his wife while touting the moral superiority of his race. But the overall image of Lindbergh presented here is less an enigma and more a flawed individual, understandable but not sympathetic.

Throughout the work, Gehrz explains, but does not excuse, Lindbergh's thoughts, and is able to distinguish between Lindbergh's voice and his own. Reflecting on the task before him, Gehrz quotes Lindbergh's own thoughts on the biases of his own future biographer. “Charles Lindbergh observed that the ‘biographer must base his writing on his own viewpoint and experience in life. Therefore, a biography must confuse to some degree the character of the author with that of his subject.’ But to the extent that rigorous research and careful interpretation can protect against such confusion, it can also help us see more clearly one of his own blind spots” (126). That blind spot, the ability to see equality as a beneficial social goal, is made evident though Gehrz's rigorous research and insightful interpretation. In that sense, this religious biography achieves what all historical biographies should achieve, a better understanding of the subject, as well as his times. But Gehrz's book also sheds light on current issues of racism, intolerance, white supremacy, and skepticism of social institutions. He acknowledges that this book was written by a Minnesotan, about another Minnesotan, in between the controversial deaths of two black Minnesotans, Philando Castile and George Floyd; the public discussions of race and racism in America bring Lindbergh's own racism into greater focus. Gehrz could have extended this discussion to examine the role privilege has played in Lindbergh's life. Lindbergh's advocacy of “quality of life” over the equality of the living, can only be argued from a position of privilege, especially from the position of a white, nominally Protestant, heterosexual man, whose singular achievement gave him a public platform for the remainder of his life. Gehrz presents an interpretation of Lindbergh's life that not only sheds light on the ambiguity of the aviator's fame and infamy, but also helps us understand our own time as well.