The War Within and Without: Diaries and Letters 1939-41, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. New York: Berkley Books. 418 pp. $3.50.

This final volume of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's letters and diaries covers the prewar and war years, during which she and her celebrated husband took their stand against the Roosevelt administration and interventionist lobbies at home and abroad. They served, for a time, as spokesmen for the isolationist position through the organization America First and heard the formerly adoring public denounce Lindbergh as a Nazi.

The volume is largely domestic, telling of years of having babies and finding suitable nurses, houses, and schools.But it is an ingenuous self-portrait of a highly sensitive, intelligent woman who, wishing to fulfill a great purpose, and lacking self-confidence to attempt it herself, dedicated her life to the service of one she could look up to, her husband, Charles.

The diaries and letters reveal a wife's painful attempts to rationalize her dedication even when her husband's opinions violated her own judgment and sensibility.They are honest, compelling, poignant records of the Lindberghs' personal lives.