At age 16 Slim Lindbergh's hero was Eddie Rickenbacker. Charles Augustus, son of a senator, didn't like to study; he farmed, and bought an Army-surplus Jenny when he was 20, tried to make a living with barnstorming, joyrides and wing walking.
In 1924, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, lured by fast engines in new planes and the possibility to become an Air Service pilot. In the Army Flying School he learned to navigate by instrument. He graduated top of his class. But 1925 saw him flying mail between St. Louis and Chicago. Always short of money, he decided to attempt the premier aviation challenge of his day. There was a prize of 25.000 dollar for the first person to fly nonstop from New York to Paris, and Lindbergh thought he could do it. Backed by St. Louis businessmen to finance a Ryan monoplane, he called it the "Spirit of St. Louis."
But he was an outsider, next to great names as Commander Byrd, French ace Nungesser, and René Fonck. Nungesser was lost, Fonck never even took off but crashed in flames on the runway. In the press, Lindbergh was called the 'Flying Fool' or the 'Flying Kid', as it was generally believed he was out of his class in his tiny monoplane.
After an evening spent in the theatre, the weather had cleared sufficiently over the Atlantic, and Lindbergh decided that he would use the opportunity. May 20, 1927, Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in New York. Fokker saw him leave: he stood at the end of the runway with his car and a fire extinguisher, expecting trouble. The heavily loaded plane dipped for a moment from view, then rose and headed east across the Atlantic Ocean. Lindbergh flew on instruments, fighting sleep all the way. He landed at Le Bourget Field, near Paris, on the evening of May 21.
Now the press called him 'Lucky Lindy', 'the Lone Eagle'. He was fêted everywhere; crowds went wild. Overnight he had become a national hero and was given the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He then embarked on a career of aviation consultant and promotor. In 1929, he met the daughter of the US Ambassador to Mexico, Anne Morrow; they fell in love and married.
In 1932, their 2 year old son Charles was killed when he was kidnapped from their home. In that same year, Anne's father died. They escaped the press frenzy and moved to England. Later, they had five other children.
Over the next few years the couple made survey flights, studying air routes: - to China using the Great Circle-Polar route, described by Anne in 'North to the Orient', and across the Atlantic from West Africa to Brazil, described in 'Listen, The Wind'. Anne was the one that could write. Anne soon learned airplane navigation and how to operate the radio, her part in the 'team'. She also became the first woman in the United States to receive a license to fly a glider airplane.
Then in the late thirties Lindbergh expressed some anti-semitic views; he even (naively, I think) accepted Nazi invitations from Göring and a medal from Hitler himself, thereby giving the Nazis plenty of PR material, and cause for second thoughts about his character.
Up to Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh argued against the country's involvement in the Second World War. But in 1944, Lindbergh managed to fly some fifty combat missions in the South Pacific until forbidden by higher authorities, and shot down a Zero as a civilian consultant.
After the war the couple retreated from view. Late in his life Lindbergh, disturbed by technology's destructive bent, dedicated himself to saving exotic species in Africa and Asia and to protecting a Stone Age-era tribe in the Philippines. Charles died in 1974 on Maui.
books, Charles Lindbergh (1902 - 1974):
We (1927): -he and his plane- the Atlantic crossing
Of Flight and Life (1948): his views on the destructiveness of 'scientific materialism'
the Spirit of St Louis (1953): the Atlantic crossing rewritten
Under a Wing: A Memoir (1998); Reeve Lindbergh (daughter)
Lindbergh (1998) biography, A. Scott Berg
books, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906 - today):
North to the Orient (1935): to Russia and China
Listen! the Wind (1938): across the South Atlantic
& a great many others on non-aviation subjects
on the web:
excerpt of arrival over Paris from 'the Spirit of St. Louis' at Plane Writing
Lindbergh baby story Theft of the Eaglet at CrimeLibrary.com
Discovery Channel article: from Here to Obscurity
Time article: The Once Favoured Son, about dubious side of Lindy
Charles and Anne Lindberg Foundation devoted to 'seek a balance between technological advancement and environmental preservation'.
pilots' biographies 
which were less well suited for aerobatics, and pilots were killed stunting them. Late December 1931, Bader felt he had to demonstrate his superior low flying skill at a nearby flying club, and crashed coming out of the roll. "Never do anything in a temper".
Four years later she was selected by publisher and businessman George Putnam to take part in a daring publicity stunt: she was the first woman passenger to cross the Atlantic in an airplane in 1928. "Bill (Wilbur Stultz) did all the flying - had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes."
He crashed on his first solo. But early 1916 saw him as a pilot of twoseaters over the front at Verdun, and subsequently over the Russian front again. In September, he was selected by Boelcke to fly in his Jagdstaffel no. 2 (the first Circus) over the Somme, the start of his career as fighter pilot. When the new pilots of his Staffel had their first victory, Boelcke gave them a silver cup with inscription. From then on, Richthofen would present himself with small 5 cm high victory cups, until later in the war the shortage of silver put an end to it.
he attacked and shot down two of a group of 23 Caudrons and Farmans.