The Immortalists

By: David M. Friedman

Narrated by: Todd McLaren

The Immortalists is the fascinating story of the friendship and extraordinary scientific collaboration of two prodigious men: Charles Lindbergh, once the most famous person in the world, and Dr. Alexis Carrel, the Nobel Prize winner regarded by many as the most brilliant surgeon who ever lived.

Lindbergh and Carrel met not long after Lindbergh's "victory lap" around the world, which followed his historic solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927. Fueled by their shared goal to find a scientific path to life without death, they spent five years in Carrel's laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, where they secretly built a machine that could keep organs alive outside the bodies that created them. This device was the forerunner of today's artificial heart and heart-lung machine.

Although they obviously failed in their ultimate quest, Lindbergh and Carrel's experiments established them as two of the most ambitious thinkers in modern history, as well as unacknowledged pioneers of biotechnology.

©2007 David M. Friedman (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"Makes complex science accessible...an absorbing cautionary tale." (Publishers Weekly)
"A captivating study of medical innovation, the fallibility of science and two adventurous minds." (Kirkus Reviews)

Fascinating and sobering

A fascinating and cautionary tale of scientific and engineering hubris. I thought I knew about Lindbergh but was surprised and saddened by his anti-Semitism and belief in eugenics. I whiled away many long hours on planes with the well-written story. The reader captures the mood of the times and presents the narrative well. This is worth your time.

Surprisingly interesting and relevant

The remarkable stories of the two larger-than-life personalities that feature in this audiobook have a great deal to say to all thoughtful modern-day technoprogressives, transhumanists, futurists, and life-extensionists. Frequently surprising. Highly recommended.