By 1927 the rise and fall of the Klan, murderous Prohibition gangsters, and crazy fads such as flagpole sitting caused many Americans to wonder about the future of their country. To some it seemed as if the age of honor had ended in the bloody trenches of World War I. Americans needed a new hero, and they found one in Charles Augustus Lindbergh, the plain-speaking senator's son from Minnesota.

On the morning of May 20, 1927, Lindbergh climbed into his single-engine airplane, Spirit of St. Louis, and took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York. With only five sandwiches and a canteen full of water—and unable see over the 425-gallon gas tank in front of the cockpit—Lindbergh aimed his plane toward Paris. For the next thirty-three and onehalf hours the pilot fought off sleep and heavy rain. At one point the turbulence...