The Italian poet Eugenio Montale wrote in his Nobel acceptance speech that any book spawns a virtual ideal reader, the book's "target". Well, I wonder whether on earth there's a better atavar of this book's target than me. I read this book a long time ago and it marked my perception of a decisive hisorical as well as existential moment. The description of Nazi-occupied Europe is the most vivid and convincing I have ever read or otherwise experienced. You have to read the German, English and Russian newspapers of those years to get the same flavour, except that here the apocalyptic weirdness and ambiguity of the whole are masterfully exploded. It is an eerie, intense book.

Having read several books regarding Lindgergh and the kidnapping of his baby, I found this to be the least plausible. His conclusion isn't well supported and seems to be making the pieces fit. Also, he introduces so many outside characters that you forget what or who you're reading about! It makes the idea of "six degrees of separation" into more like twenty. There are other "Crime of the Century" books out there that are better researched and supported.

Anyone who has studied the tousled hair and body language of Charles Lindbergh alongside that of John F. Kennedy will see some similarities, right down to the way they stuck their hands in the pockets of their suitcoats. The hero image of Lucky Lindy and that of the commander of PT-109. Here, Noel Behn makes a well-documented hypothesis that there was a cover-up in the Lindberg kidnapping case. His access to the archives of then New Jersey governor Hoffman, who was discredited by a corruption scandal at the moment he was raising doubts about Hauptmann's guilt (some have gone so far to say he was close to Fritzl Kuhn's "German-American Bund"), adds an additonal modicum of credibility to Behn's offering. When one reads Behn and then looks at what news icon Peter Jennings presented last year in his retrospective on the Lindberg case, Jennings becomes the moral equivalent of Dan Rather getting caught posing as a Mujaheddin rebel on his own news show. Behn suggests that there may have been no kidnapping at all and that Anne Morrow Lindberg's sister is the card in this game of Clue. The motive for the murder, jealousy. The motive for the cover up, the reputation of a young hero, the future of aviation, and the reputation of America's most powerful banking institution. Enter Col. Norman Schwarzkopf, the rigid, commander of the New Jersey State Police and father of our Desert Storm hero "Stormin (but not to Baghdad) Norman". Add Republican lawyer/dealmaker "Wild Bill" Donovan (who would become head of the OSS during World War II) to the mix. And the zealous prosecutor David Wilentz, who had lines open to organized crime and its legit businesses as some say the law firm that bears his name continues to have today. There was no "Grassy Knoll" here. But there was "the cemetery". Best for one to get the details oneself. What sets this work apart from others is that it dares to think outside the box on one of the great "crimes of the century". When examining the film footage of the trial, how dissimilar are the tirades of Wilentz against Hauptmann from those of Nazi Volksrichter Freissler against Colonel Von Stauffenberg, who placed the bomb under Hitler's desk in the Wolfschanze? The older sister of Anne Morrow Lindberg was spirited off to the United Kingdom, Behn tells us. There was the marraige of the sister to a British academic type, ensuing mental problems and an early death under strange circumstances. Considering that coming up with new revelations about the Lindberg "kidnapping" is about as difficult as obtaining the latest revelations about the progress of making public the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Behn's work (including his hypothesis)has established the foundation upon which a yonger generation of journalists and investigative reporters can build.

I found this book to be extremely interesting. Noel Behn did an excellent job keeping my attention. He was able to present an amazing amount of detail while still making it easy to follow.

This book wasn't the best offering I have ever had. It was very poorly written and hard to understand. This fact is proven when they are discussing the city roads and you can't follow a thing. On the other hand there is a load of information, but it is not worth it. I only got through have the book. It was incredibly hard to follow, and there were little explanations for the things that happened. It included information that was never neccesary. This book isn't worth picking up. Unfortunately there aren't many othr books on the case.