In his book, The Kinsey Data: Marginal Tabulations of the 1938–1963 Interviews Conducted by the Institute for Sex Research (Philadelphia, 1979), Kinsey’s colleague Paul H. Gebhard, who was assisted by Alan B. Johnson, provides useful insights into Kinsey’s method of interviewing.
The Kinsey Institute, located on the campus of Indiana University, holds tens of thousands of letters and documents that cover every aspect of Kinsey’s long scientific career. After the death of his wife, his personal papers were divided equally among his three children, Joan, Anne, and Bruce, and they remain in the hands of the family. I examined original Kinsey manuscripts at both the Kinsey Institute and at Harvard University’s Pusey Library, where I read his application to graduate school and his correspondence with his advisor, William Morton Wheeler.
For information on Kinsey’s academic career, I consulted Thomas D. Clark’s Indiana University: Midwestern Pioneer, Volume III: Years of Fulfillment (Bloomington, IN, 1977). And to learn more about his friends, associates, and enemies, I looked at Samuel Steward’s Chapters from an Autobiography (San Francisco, 1981); Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade (New York, 2010) by Justin Spring; Continual Lessons: The Journals of Glenway Wescott, 1937–1955 (New York, 1990), edited by Robert Phelps and Jerry Rosco; as well as Warren Weaver’s memoir, Scene of Change: A Lifetime in American Science (New York, 1970).
Author interviews: T. C. Boyle, Paul Gebhard, James H. Jones, Consuelo Lopez-Morillas, Reed Martin, and Judith Riesman.
5. Aviation: Charles Lindbergh
I derive my account of Lindbergh’s childhood visit to the White House from a letter written that night (February 21, 1916), by his mother, Evangeline Land Lindbergh, to his grandmother, Evangeline Lodge Land, which is held at Yale’s Sterling Library. Yale holds the vast majority of Lindbergh’s papers—its Lindbergh Archive includes hundreds of boxes of materials—and I focused on manuscripts related to his first few decades. However, I also examined several other slices, such as his detailed notes on the work of early biographers contained in a box called “Biographical Treatment of Himself.” According to Yale’s archivists, A. Scott Berg spent years at the library, going through every box, in order to complete his biography, Lindbergh (New York, 1998), which was authorized by Anne Lindbergh. The other major repository is the Lindbergh Collection at the Minnesota Historical Society, which I did not visit. I did, however, find a handful of letters at Harvard’s Houghton Library—of particular interest was the correspondence between Lindbergh and the late Boston writer J. P. Marquand—which A. Scott Berg did not track down. Reeve Lindbergh, Lindbergh's literary executor, kindly gave me permission to quote from these unpublished documents.
Other biographies include The Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh and the American Dream (New York, 1959) by Kenneth S. Davis, Lindbergh: A Biography (New York, 1976) by Leonard Mosely, and Lindbergh Alone (New York, 1977) by Brendan Gill. For more on the trip to Paris, see The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of American Aviation (New York, 2010) by Thomas Kessner.
Lindbergh’s three children with Brigitte Hesshaimer—Dyrk Hesshaimer, Astrid Bouteil, and David Hesshaimer—are listed as coauthors of the biography written by Rudolf Schroeck, Das Doppelleben des Charles A. Lindbergh (Munich, 2005). Dyrk Hesshaimer’s fifteen-minute interview with Swiss talk-show host Kurt Aeschbacher aired on September 9, 2005, and can be downloaded from the Swiss TV website’s SF Videoportal page (www.videoportal.sf.tv/?WT.zugang=front_sfe).
A careful writer, Lindbergh wrote eloquently about both his flight and various chapters of his life in We (New York, 1927), The Spirit of St. Louis (New York, 1953), and The Autobiography of Values (New York, 1978). Other less well-known autobiographical writings are The Boyhood Diary of Charles Lindbergh, 1913–1916: Early Adventure of the Famous Aviator (North Mankato, MN, 2000), edited by Megan O’Hara; and Lindbergh Looks Back: A Boyhood Reminiscence (St. Paul, MN, 2002), which features a foreword by Reeve Lindbergh and an introduction by Brian Horrigan, a curator of the Minnesota Historical Society. Lindbergh himself also wrote the foreword to the major biography of his father, Bruce Larson’s Lindbergh of Minnesota: A Political Biography (New York, 1973).
For details on the scandal involving psychiatrist John N. Rosen in the 1980s, see Edward Dolnick, Madness on the Couch: Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis (New York, 1998) and Jeffrey Masson, Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing (New York, 1988).
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea (New York, 1955).
On Lindbergh’s scientific research with Carrel, see David M. Friedman, The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and the Quest to Live Forever (New York, 2007).
My account of the first dates of Charles and Anne Lindbergh comes from Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922–1928 (New York, 1972). In the last of the six volumes of personal writings, Against the Wind: Letters and Journals, 1947–1986 (New York, 2012), edited by Reeve Lindbergh (who also wrote a thoughtful introduction), Anne alludes to her affairs with Dana Atchley and Alan Valentine. For more on Lindbergh’s wife, see Susan Hertog’s Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life (New York, 1999) and Joyce Milton’s Loss of Eden: A Biography of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh (New York, 1993).
Reeve Lindbergh has written eloquently about her childhood in Under a Wing (New York, 1998). In a subsequent memoir, Forward from Here: Leaving Middle Age and Other Unexpected Adventures (New York, 2008), she discusses with wit and sensitivity her reaction to learning that her father also had three German families.
Author interviews: Brian Horrigan, Tom Flanagan, Dyrk Hesshaimer, Judith Schiff, Kristina Lindbergh, and Reeve Lindbergh.
6. Beauty: Estée Lauder
Marylin Bender wrote the first short biography of Lauder, which was based on her 1973 New York Times story “Estée Lauder: A Family Affair,” which she included as a chapter in her collection, At the Top (New York, 1975). As noted, the only full-scale biographies are Lee Israel, Estee Lauder: Beyond the Magic (New York, 1985), and Lauder’s own Estée: A Success Story (New York, 1985). Most other accounts of Lauder’s life rely heavily on these two sources, such as the chapters in Gene N. Landrum’s Profiles of Female Genius: Thirteen Creative Women Who Changed the World (Amherst, NY, 1994) and Doris Burchard’s Der Kampf um die Schoenheit: Helena Rubinstein, Elizabeth Arden, Estée Lauder (Hamburg, 1999). The one notable exception is Nancy Koehn’s thoroughly researched chapter in Brand New (cited under chapter 2), which also draws on her own interview with Leonard Lauder. The brilliant New Yorker profile “As Good As It Gets” (September 15, 1986), by the fashion writer Kennedy Fraser, provides an excellent snapshot of the nearly eighty-year-old entrepreneur. Lindy Woodhead’s War Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden: Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry (New York, 2004) also contains some useful tidbits about Lauder.
To learn more about Lauder’s early years in Queens, I downloaded the relevant census records that are available on the website Ancestry.com. For more on the 1916 public health crisis that affected her family, see the monograph compiled by the New York City Department of Health, The Epidemic of Poliomyelitis (Infantile Paralysis), (New York, 1917).
Rebecca Mead’s telling profile of Ronald Lauder, “An Acquiring Eye,” appeared in the New Yorker (January 15, 2007). Kai Falkenberg discusses the seven-year affair between William Lauder and Taylor Stein in “The Secret Tale of William Lauder,” Forbes (March 10, 2010). For a recent profile of Jane Lauder, see Jenny B. Fine, “Jane Lauder: The Natural,” Beauty Inc (August 10, 2012). For more on William, Jane, and Aerin Lauder, see Daniel Roth, “The Sweet Smell of Succession,” Fortune (September 19, 2005).
Cathie Black, Basic Black: The Essential Guide to Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life) (New York, 2007). Andrew P. Tobias, Fire and Ice: The Story of Charles Revson—the Man Who Built the Revlon Empire (New York, 1976).
While Es
tée Lauder didn’t leave much of a paper trail, the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study contains a few original Lauder manuscripts. One interesting item is a brief undated letter from 1983, enclosing some samples, which Lauder sent to Julia Child after reading in the Los Angeles Times that the cooking guru used her perfume Aliage. Child did not respond. This library also houses Hazel Bishop’s notes on a brief talk Lauder gave to her class at the Fashion Institute of Technology in the mid-1980s, to which I refer in the chapter. Leonard Lauder describes his love of collecting in his preface to The Postcard Age: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, coauthored by Lynda Klich and Benjamin Weiss (Boston, 2012).
In her controversial memoir, Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger (New York, 2008), Lee Israel talks briefly about her own disappointment with her Lauder biography.
Mark Tungate, Branded Beauty: How Marketing Changed the Way We Look (Philadelphia, 2011).
Author interviews: Agnes Ash, Marylin Bender, Mary Randolph Carter, Ann Friedman, Michael Gibbons, Fayette Hickox, Lee Israel, Aerin Lauder, Jane Lauder, Leonard Lauder, Ronald Lauder, William Lauder, Vincent Tomeo, and two sources—a family member and a former coworker—who did not wish to be identified.
7. Sports: Ted Williams
Ted Williams’s complex personality has inspired some of America’s best sportswriting. Two shining examples are John Updike’s 1960 New Yorker article, since rereleased as a book, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams (New York, 2010), and Richard Ben Cramer’s 1986 Esquire article, rereleased as a short biography, What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now? A Remembrance (New York, 2002). The collection Ted Williams: Reflections on a Splendid Life (Boston, 2003), edited by Lawrence Baldassaro, contains numerous lively pieces published between 1940 and 2002.
At present, Leigh Montville’s Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero (New York, 2004) remains definitive. Benjamin Bradlee Jr., a former editor at the Boston Globe who, unlike Montville, has the full cooperation of the Williams family—namely, his daughter Claudia—has been working on a biography for more than a decade, but it’s still unclear when this book will be published. Earlier biographies include Ed Linn’s Hitter: The Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams (Orlando, FL, 1993) and Michael Seidel’s Ted Williams: A Baseball Life (Lincoln, NE, 1991). The baseball aficionado Bill Nowlin has written two comprehensive books on particular segments of Williams’s life, The Kid: Ted Williams in San Diego (Cambridge, MA, 2005) and Ted Williams at War (Cambridge, MA, 2007). For information on Williams’s early years in San Diego, I also consulted Bill Swank, Echoes from Lane Field: A History of the San Diego Padres (Paducah, KY, 1999).
John Underwood has coauthored three books with Williams: My Turn at Bat: The Story of My Life (New York, 1969), The Science of Hitting (New York, 1971), and Fishing “the Big Three”: Tarpon, Bonefish, and Atlantic Salmon (New York, 1982). After the slugger’s death, Underwood also wrote a moving book of reflections, which comes with a CD containing interviews with Williams, It’s Only Me: The Ted Williams We Hardly Knew (Chicago, 2005).
David Cataneo, I Remember Ted Williams: Anecdotes and Memories of Baseball’s Splendid Splinter by the Players and People Who Knew Him (Nashville, TN, 2002).
The ex-Alcor employee Larry Johnson was assisted by Scott Baldyga in the writing of the controversial book about Williams’s remains, Frozen: My Journey into the World of Cryonics, Deception, and Death (New York, 2009). For more on his career as a manager, see Ted Leavengood, Ted Williams and the 1969 Washington Senators: The Last Winning Season (Jefferson, NC, 2009).
In April 2012, I examined many of Williams’s household items at Fenway Park where they were being auctioned. The beautifully illustrated catalog, The Ted Williams Collection at Public Auction (Exton, PA, 2012) prepared by Hunt Auctions, shows what he kept in his Florida home—his memorabilia, his hunting gear, and his books. Among the volumes in his personal library was a copy of Charles Lindbergh’s We, which he apparently obtained as a young boy.
Williams’s nephew, also named Ted Williams, shared with me some letters that Williams had written in the late 1950s, including the one that I cite that concerns the health of his elderly mother.
Author interviews: Steve August, Yogi Berra, Wade Boggs, Dick Bresiani, Bobby Doerr, Mike Epstein, Dave Ferriss, Suzanne Fountain, Rich Gedman, Richard Johnson, Frank Malzone, Leigh Montville, Bill Nowlin, Jim Prime, Dan Shaughnessy, Nathan Stalvey, Bill Swank, John Underwood, Russ White, Dick Williams, Sam Williams (nephew), and Ted Williams (nephew).
Epilogue
The epigraph from Theodore Sturgeon, né Edward Hamilton Waldo (1918–1985), comes from an interview with David D. Duncan published in Phoenix, the University of Tennessee literary magazine, in its fall 1979 issue.
John D. Oldham, “Presidential Address: Integrated Care,” delivered at the 165th Annual Convention of the American Psychiatric Association, Philadelphia, PA, in May 2012.
Author interviews: See under Prologue.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my agent, Suzanne Gluck of William Morris Endeavor, for suggesting that I turn my obsession with the obsessed into a book. Every time I found myself amused by the discovery of yet another obsessive quirk in one of my subjects—which was often—I couldn’t believe that I had a day job that I loved so much. Eric Lupfer, her colleague at William Morris Endeavor, also offered invaluable assistance on the proposal. At Grand Central, I am deeply indebted to the tireless efforts of my editor, John Brodie; in the hurly-burly world that is twenty-first-century publishing, it’s a distinct pleasure to work with someone so deeply committed to bringing out the best in his writers. His assistant, Meredith Haggerty, has also been helpful at each stage of the process. I also thank Rachel Youdelman for reading a draft of the manuscript and for her expert photo research.
While numerous archivists from across the country responded to my queries, several deserve special mention. Judith Schiff, chief research archivist of the Yale University Library, helped me find what I was looking for in the vast collection of Lindbergh manuscripts located at Yale’s Sterling Library in New Haven. Likewise, Thomas G. Lannon, assistant curator of Manuscripts and Archives at the New York Public Library; Peter Nelson, assistant archivist at the Amherst College Library; Kajsa Anderson, archives graduate assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana; and Tara C. Reid, reference services supervisor at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, were all instrumental in helping me track down various Melvil Dewey manuscripts. At the Kinsey Institute, Shawn Wilson, library public services manager, made sure that I made the most of my trip to Bloomington. And Art Louderback, the chief librarian at the Heinz History Center, was a big help during my visit to Pittsburgh.
I am grateful to everyone who agreed to be interviewed (and their names are all listed in the notes section). I also owe a particular debt to those individuals who helped me contact difficult-to-reach family members and associates of my subjects. Tony Schwenk set up my interview with Dyrk Hesshaimer in Munich. Samantha Goldsmith, Enid Kemmer, and Bari Seiden of Estée Lauder Global Communications arranged for my visit to the company’s Fifth Avenue offices and for my interviews with Leonard Lauder, Ronald Lauder, William Lauder, Jane Lauder, and Aerin Lauder. And Bill Nowlin helped me locate Ted Williams’s nephews, Ted Williams and Sam Williams, whom I interviewed by phone. And thanks to Steve Alexander for setting up my phone interview with Hall of Famer Wade Boggs.
And I am grateful to Carrie and Thomas Kupka, the current residents of the fifth-floor apartment at 44 Agnesstrasse in Munich, where Lindbergh first met Brigitte and Marietta Hesshaimer, for inviting me to visit their home.
A fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts funded a three-week residency in December 2010.
Finally, I want to acknowledge the friendship of the late Andrew Brink, a former professor of English at McMaster University a
nd a prolific literary scholar, to whom this book is dedicated. I first met Andrew in 1995 at an academic conference. In the early 2000s, as I was starting out as a biographer, he took the time to read whatever I sent him and provide insightful feedback. And his thoughtful work has helped me find my own niche. As he noted in the first line of his 1996 book, Obsession and Culture, “Obsession is a term in broad popular use whose value in studying culture has been underestimated.”
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Contents
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue: The Obsessive Innovator
Part One: Founding Farmers and Factoid Finders
1.: Politics: Thomas Jefferson
2.: Marketing: Henry Heinz
Part Two: Secret Sex Maniacs
3.: Information Technology: Melvil Dewey
4.: Sexuality: Alfred Kinsey
5.: Aviation: Charles Lindbergh
Part Three: Celebrity Compulsives
6.: Beauty: Estée Lauder
7.: Sports: Ted Williams
Epilogue: Future Obsessives
Sources
Acknowledgments
Newsletters
Copyright
America's Obsessives: The Compulsive Energy That Built a Nation Page 37