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Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic
For five weeks—from April 14 to May 21, 1927—the world held its breath while fourteen aviators took to the air to capture the $25,000 prize that Raymond Orteig offered to the first man to cross the Atlantic Ocean without stopping.
Joe Jackson's Atlantic Fever is about this race, a milestone in American history whose story has never been fully told. Delving into the lives of the big-name competitors—the polar explorer Richard Byrd, the French war hero René Fonck, the millionaire Charles Levine, and the race's eventual winner, the enigmatic Charles Lindbergh—as well as those whose names have been forgotten by history (such as Bernt Balchen, Stanton Wooster, and Clarence Chamberlin), Jackson brings a completely fresh and original perspective to the race to conquer the Atlantic.
Atlantic Fever opens for us one of those magical windows onto a moment when the nexus of technology, innovation, character, and spirit led so many contenders from different parts of the world to be on the cusp of the exact same achievement at the exact same time.
Joe Jackson's Atlantic Fever is about this race, a milestone in American history whose story has never been fully told. Delving into the lives of the big-name competitors—the polar explorer Richard Byrd, the French war hero René Fonck, the millionaire Charles Levine, and the race's eventual winner, the enigmatic Charles Lindbergh—as well as those whose names have been forgotten by history (such as Bernt Balchen, Stanton Wooster, and Clarence Chamberlin), Jackson brings a completely fresh and original perspective to the race to conquer the Atlantic.
Atlantic Fever opens for us one of those magical windows onto a moment when the nexus of technology, innovation, character, and spirit led so many contenders from different parts of the world to be on the cusp of the exact same achievement at the exact same time.
560 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2012
About the author
Joe Jackson
8 books13 followersJoe Jackson is the author of seven works of nonfiction and a novel. His nonfiction includes: Leavenworth Train, a finalist for the 2002 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime; Dead Run: The Shocking Story of Dennis Stockton and Life on Death Row in America, with co-author William F. Burke and an introduction by William Styron; A Furnace Afloat: The Wreck of the Hornet and the Harrowing 4,300-mile of its Survivors; A World on Fire: A Heretic, an Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen; The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire, one of Time magazine's Top Ten Books of 2008; and Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic, released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in May 2012. A first novel, How I Left the Great State of Tennessee and Went on to Better Things, was released in March 2004.
His seventh work of nonfiction - Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary - was released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in October 2016; it chronicles the life of Oglala Lakota holy man Black Elk, best known for his 1932 Black Elk Speaks, written in collaboration with the Nebraska poet-laureate John Neihardt. Jackson's biography received the following honors and awards in 2017: Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography; Best Biography of 2016, True West magazine; Winner of the Western Writers of America 2017 Spur Award, Best Western Biography; Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography; and One of the Best Books of 2016, The Boston Globe.
His seventh work of nonfiction - Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary - was released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in October 2016; it chronicles the life of Oglala Lakota holy man Black Elk, best known for his 1932 Black Elk Speaks, written in collaboration with the Nebraska poet-laureate John Neihardt. Jackson's biography received the following honors and awards in 2017: Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography; Best Biography of 2016, True West magazine; Winner of the Western Writers of America 2017 Spur Award, Best Western Biography; Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography; and One of the Best Books of 2016, The Boston Globe.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
September 18, 2026
Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic is written with great energy. The narrative is fluid, lively, and consistently enjoyable, which suits perfectly the extraordinary atmosphere of aviation during the 1920s.
I had already read A. Scott Berg’s excellent biography of Charles Lindbergh, which had given me a detailed understanding of Lindbergh himself and of the significance of his famous flight. What Atlantic Fever adds, however, is something quite different and equally valuable: the broader historical context surrounding the race for prizes, money, recognition, and, above all, the glory of becoming the first pilot to fly nonstop and solo between New York and Paris.
Lindbergh was not, of course, the first aviator to cross the Atlantic nonstop. Alcock and Brown had accomplished that feat in 1919. His achievement in 1927 was the first solo nonstop crossing and the successful completion of the New York-to-Paris challenge associated with the Orteig Prize. Placing his flight within the much larger competition of the period makes his accomplishment easier to understand and, in some ways, even more impressive.
One of the great strengths of the book is precisely that Lindbergh is not presented in isolation. We follow the many other pilots and teams who were chasing similar records and prizes. Their adventures, mechanical failures, forced landings, crashes, miscalculations, and sometimes extraordinary improvisations recreate the almost feverish atmosphere surrounding aviation during the Roaring Twenties.
Flying records had become major public events. Newspapers turned aviators into celebrities, while financial prizes and the possibility of lucrative contracts, endorsements, and speaking tours added powerful incentives. There was a continuous search for the next spectacular achievement: flying farther, faster, or across increasingly dangerous stretches of ocean. Aviation was not only a technological adventure; it had also become entertainment, business, and a source of instant celebrity.
What is particularly striking is the extraordinary human cost of this competition. A remarkable number of pilots and crew members died while attempting these exploits. Some simply disappeared without leaving a trace, whether over the Atlantic, in the Caribbean, or during attempts to cross the Pacific between Hawaii and the continental United States. The courage involved was undeniable, but so was the recklessness that sometimes accompanied the pursuit of records.
The book therefore presents a more complicated picture than the traditional heroic narrative of early aviation. These men and women were pioneers, but they were operating in an environment where technology was still unreliable, meteorological knowledge limited, navigation difficult, and the margin for error extremely small. Behind every successful record stood numerous failures and, too often, fatalities.
Another aspect that fascinated me was the fleeting nature of fame. Several aviators became national or international celebrities almost overnight after achieving a spectacular record. Yet fame could disappear almost as quickly as it had arrived. Some later experienced bankruptcies, unsuccessful business ventures, professional disappointments, or difficult personal lives, eventually falling into relative obscurity.
This contrast says something interesting about the culture of celebrity itself. A record could bring enormous attention for a few months or a few years, but it did not guarantee a lasting career or a permanent place in history. Lindbergh became exceptional not simply because he achieved a remarkable aviation record, but because his flight became one of those rare events that permanently entered historical memory. Many others who had taken comparable risks, and sometimes accomplished remarkable feats of their own, are now almost forgotten.
That may be one of the most interesting contributions of Atlantic Fever. History is usually remembered through its winners. By restoring Lindbergh’s competitors to the story, the book shows that major achievements are rarely isolated events. They emerge from an entire environment of experimentation, competition, failure, accumulated experience, and sometimes tragedy. Lindbergh succeeded within an aviation culture that had already been learning, often painfully, from the successes and mistakes of others.
The book is also a fascinating portrait of a technological transition. At the beginning of this period, aviation remained largely the world of individual adventurers, record seekers, barnstormers, military pilots, and experimental aircraft. Flying across an ocean was still closer to an expedition than to transportation.
Yet behind these spectacular exploits, something much more important was gradually developing. Aircraft were becoming more reliable, navigation was improving, weather forecasting was becoming more sophisticated, airports and infrastructure were expanding, and commercial aviation was beginning to emerge.
In that sense, the record seekers were participating, sometimes without fully realizing it, in the transformation of the airplane from an extraordinary machine for individual exploits into a practical means of transportation. Within only a few years, the emphasis would increasingly shift from courage and records toward reliability, schedules, passenger safety, navigation, and commercial networks.
This is what makes Atlantic Fever more than simply another account of Lindbergh’s flight. It offers a vivid picture of an era fascinated by technological progress, personal daring, money, publicity, and spectacular achievement. It captures both the excitement and the darker side of the early aviation age: the courage, ambition, improvisation, competition, financial incentives, tragedies, and ephemeral fame that accompanied it.
For me, the book works especially well as a complement to Scott Berg’s biography of Lindbergh. Berg helped me understand the man; Atlantic Fever helped me understand the world around him. Together, they provide a much richer picture of why Lindbergh’s achievement mattered and of the extraordinary aviation culture from which it emerged.
Ultimately, Atlantic Fever is a remarkable portrait of the moment when aviation was moving from heroic experimentation toward modern transportation — a brief period when crossing an ocean could simultaneously be an engineering experiment, a commercial gamble, a sporting competition, a media spectacle, and a matter of life and death.
I had already read A. Scott Berg’s excellent biography of Charles Lindbergh, which had given me a detailed understanding of Lindbergh himself and of the significance of his famous flight. What Atlantic Fever adds, however, is something quite different and equally valuable: the broader historical context surrounding the race for prizes, money, recognition, and, above all, the glory of becoming the first pilot to fly nonstop and solo between New York and Paris.
Lindbergh was not, of course, the first aviator to cross the Atlantic nonstop. Alcock and Brown had accomplished that feat in 1919. His achievement in 1927 was the first solo nonstop crossing and the successful completion of the New York-to-Paris challenge associated with the Orteig Prize. Placing his flight within the much larger competition of the period makes his accomplishment easier to understand and, in some ways, even more impressive.
One of the great strengths of the book is precisely that Lindbergh is not presented in isolation. We follow the many other pilots and teams who were chasing similar records and prizes. Their adventures, mechanical failures, forced landings, crashes, miscalculations, and sometimes extraordinary improvisations recreate the almost feverish atmosphere surrounding aviation during the Roaring Twenties.
Flying records had become major public events. Newspapers turned aviators into celebrities, while financial prizes and the possibility of lucrative contracts, endorsements, and speaking tours added powerful incentives. There was a continuous search for the next spectacular achievement: flying farther, faster, or across increasingly dangerous stretches of ocean. Aviation was not only a technological adventure; it had also become entertainment, business, and a source of instant celebrity.
What is particularly striking is the extraordinary human cost of this competition. A remarkable number of pilots and crew members died while attempting these exploits. Some simply disappeared without leaving a trace, whether over the Atlantic, in the Caribbean, or during attempts to cross the Pacific between Hawaii and the continental United States. The courage involved was undeniable, but so was the recklessness that sometimes accompanied the pursuit of records.
The book therefore presents a more complicated picture than the traditional heroic narrative of early aviation. These men and women were pioneers, but they were operating in an environment where technology was still unreliable, meteorological knowledge limited, navigation difficult, and the margin for error extremely small. Behind every successful record stood numerous failures and, too often, fatalities.
Another aspect that fascinated me was the fleeting nature of fame. Several aviators became national or international celebrities almost overnight after achieving a spectacular record. Yet fame could disappear almost as quickly as it had arrived. Some later experienced bankruptcies, unsuccessful business ventures, professional disappointments, or difficult personal lives, eventually falling into relative obscurity.
This contrast says something interesting about the culture of celebrity itself. A record could bring enormous attention for a few months or a few years, but it did not guarantee a lasting career or a permanent place in history. Lindbergh became exceptional not simply because he achieved a remarkable aviation record, but because his flight became one of those rare events that permanently entered historical memory. Many others who had taken comparable risks, and sometimes accomplished remarkable feats of their own, are now almost forgotten.
That may be one of the most interesting contributions of Atlantic Fever. History is usually remembered through its winners. By restoring Lindbergh’s competitors to the story, the book shows that major achievements are rarely isolated events. They emerge from an entire environment of experimentation, competition, failure, accumulated experience, and sometimes tragedy. Lindbergh succeeded within an aviation culture that had already been learning, often painfully, from the successes and mistakes of others.
The book is also a fascinating portrait of a technological transition. At the beginning of this period, aviation remained largely the world of individual adventurers, record seekers, barnstormers, military pilots, and experimental aircraft. Flying across an ocean was still closer to an expedition than to transportation.
Yet behind these spectacular exploits, something much more important was gradually developing. Aircraft were becoming more reliable, navigation was improving, weather forecasting was becoming more sophisticated, airports and infrastructure were expanding, and commercial aviation was beginning to emerge.
In that sense, the record seekers were participating, sometimes without fully realizing it, in the transformation of the airplane from an extraordinary machine for individual exploits into a practical means of transportation. Within only a few years, the emphasis would increasingly shift from courage and records toward reliability, schedules, passenger safety, navigation, and commercial networks.
This is what makes Atlantic Fever more than simply another account of Lindbergh’s flight. It offers a vivid picture of an era fascinated by technological progress, personal daring, money, publicity, and spectacular achievement. It captures both the excitement and the darker side of the early aviation age: the courage, ambition, improvisation, competition, financial incentives, tragedies, and ephemeral fame that accompanied it.
For me, the book works especially well as a complement to Scott Berg’s biography of Lindbergh. Berg helped me understand the man; Atlantic Fever helped me understand the world around him. Together, they provide a much richer picture of why Lindbergh’s achievement mattered and of the extraordinary aviation culture from which it emerged.
Ultimately, Atlantic Fever is a remarkable portrait of the moment when aviation was moving from heroic experimentation toward modern transportation — a brief period when crossing an ocean could simultaneously be an engineering experiment, a commercial gamble, a sporting competition, a media spectacle, and a matter of life and death.
April 2, 2013
Having read several books about Lindbergh's flight to Paris in 1917 I thought I knew what happened.
Jackson sheds light on so much more than Lindbergh's successful flight. He recounts the complete story of the race to win the Orteig Prize; the failures, the deaths, the successes following Lindbergh's and the impact on those who succeeded and those who failed, but survived.
A must read for those who want to know the whole story of the race to win the Orteig Prize and the aviation hysteria that followed.
Jackson sheds light on so much more than Lindbergh's successful flight. He recounts the complete story of the race to win the Orteig Prize; the failures, the deaths, the successes following Lindbergh's and the impact on those who succeeded and those who failed, but survived.
A must read for those who want to know the whole story of the race to win the Orteig Prize and the aviation hysteria that followed.
November 27, 2019
Jackson has done an incredible job putting together historic facts and anecdotal narratives to engage the reader. A great read!
January 13, 2022
Well written. A page turner, it kept my interest throughout.
March 14, 2026
Everyone knows the end if this story, but such an unlikely tale is more starting point than finish line. At the tail end of the jazz era the Orteig Prize grabbed the public's interest. Money offered - $25,000 -for the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris kept millions enraptured. From newspaper magnates to wannabe adventurers, the dream of such a technological achievement fired imaginations, not least among some barely capable contestants.
Of all the possible aviators, Lindbergh was by far the most sober when weighing his chances. The field of rapscallions and con-men who rose to be his competition became even more interesting.
Fascinating recounting of early commercial aviation's coming of age.
Of all the possible aviators, Lindbergh was by far the most sober when weighing his chances. The field of rapscallions and con-men who rose to be his competition became even more interesting.
Fascinating recounting of early commercial aviation's coming of age.
April 22, 2024
This book has taken me months. It was 400 pages, but I still should have been able to get through it faster. This may give you the idea that I didn't like it, but strangely, I did like it! It was a book I would leave untouched for a while, but then as soon as I started reading again, I forgot how good it was! Weird.
I gave this book to my husband who loves aviation. He enjoyed it, but also found it hard to stick with.
You might think there was too much "airplane" detail in it, but I didn't think so. It was more about the PEOPLE involved in this race to Paris. And our American & European "culture" post WWI. Interesting.
I gave this book to my husband who loves aviation. He enjoyed it, but also found it hard to stick with.
You might think there was too much "airplane" detail in it, but I didn't think so. It was more about the PEOPLE involved in this race to Paris. And our American & European "culture" post WWI. Interesting.
October 1, 2023
The inside story about the Gods of aviation. The motivations of the individual competitors, their anxieties, their relationships with each other, and the consequences . . . it's all here meticulously researched.
February 10, 2012
85 years ago this month Charles Lindbergh flew from NYC to Paris in his plane, "The Spirit of St. Louis". Joe Jackson's excellent book deals with the competition for the Ortega Prize and the "Atlantic Fever" that gripped America, Europe, and the rest of the world, in the months leading up to May 1927 and after.
This is a well written book that outlines how the world embraced the concept of aviation and those who flew. The men, and few women, involved with the pursuit of the Ortega Prize were an eclectic group of alpha individuals who were devoted to the science of flight. Many of them paid for their devotion with their lives.
If you have read Scott Berg's biography of Lindbergh or Lindbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis", you will enjoy this new addition to the history of aviation. If you have not, do yourself a favor and read it. Read it and be amazed how, in some ways, little America has not changed at all in 85 years.
This is a well written book that outlines how the world embraced the concept of aviation and those who flew. The men, and few women, involved with the pursuit of the Ortega Prize were an eclectic group of alpha individuals who were devoted to the science of flight. Many of them paid for their devotion with their lives.
If you have read Scott Berg's biography of Lindbergh or Lindbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis", you will enjoy this new addition to the history of aviation. If you have not, do yourself a favor and read it. Read it and be amazed how, in some ways, little America has not changed at all in 85 years.
July 2, 2012
Among the schemers Jackson chronicles is Admiral Richard E. Byrd, whose machinations and manipulations on the stage of world-class feat-making would make him almost as legendary as Lindbergh. In the 1990s and early 2000s I published Jackson’s first three books, including the co-authored Dead Run, with an Introduction by William Styron. Jackson’s a very gifted writer of narrative nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews says of his latest: “With stirring detail and perceptive insight about the pilots and the public, Jackson recaptures the tone and tenor of a frantic era’s national obsession.”
March 19, 2013
A splendid, detailed account of the many players who participated in this race, most of whom have passed into obscurity. Everybody remembers Lindbergh, and a few still remember Byrd, but the others (Fonck, Chamberlin, Acosta, Belchen, Levine, et al) were unknown to me, and their stories are all fascinating. Most enjoyable.
July 23, 2012
Joe Jackson did a great job of describing flyers. He got Adm. Byrd's personality as I witnessed it on Operation Deep-Freeze One, 1955-56 When I exchanged e-mails with author Jackson, he steered me to books concerning Byrd's claims, which backed up my opinions.
August 21, 2012
Great read - very enjoyable and extremely readable. Provides interesting insights into the fever to set new aviation records and advance the state of the industry. Great summer read - couldn't put it down.
August 26, 2012
A tremendous book with fascinating information about the construction of early airplanes, the financial backers of the fliers, the competitors with all of their quirks, and the history of flying. It kept my interest from the beginning to the end.
October 24, 2012
Not bad portrayal of the dramatis personae involved in the Atlantic crossing. The crew infighting is particularly interesting.
December 29, 2012
Interesting read regarding the race to be first to cross the Atlantic non-stop by plane. High mortality rate. Interesting story. After Lindbergh several others in rapid order (not solo though).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 10, 2013
Great "rest of the story" book.
November 11, 2014
A lot of very interesting information. Quite a few mistakes in technical descriptions of aircraft components.
March 15, 2016
What a fever a prize does to those in Aviation this book was those who tried to win and what sad ending for those that participated
October 5, 2012
Very nicely written. I'm getting really into books on exploration, this is great so far.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews