Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) captured the hearts of the enitre nation after becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in 1928. She was a social worker, author, lecturer, businesswoman, educator, and tireless promoter of women's rights. Yet, over half a century after her mysterious disappearance, many questions remain unanswered. East to the Dawn finally sets the record straight, providing the most comprehensive account to date of Earhart's extraordinary life. Based on ten years of research through archives, letters, and diaries, and on interviews with friends and relatives, this book includes intricate details about Earhart's career and her fateful last flight, with excerpts from letters written during the journey by her navigator Fred Noonan. The author also traces Earhart's personal life: her early years with her grandparents; her experiences as a nurse, premed student at Columbia University, and social worker; her famous marriage to publisher George Putnam; and her secret affair with Gene Vidal. This biography presents a revealing picture of Earhart in all her complexity, and is sure to be the last word on her incredible flying record.
This title charts the history of women's involvement in aviation, exploring how American and British women donned goggles and gloves to fly through a predominantly masculine world and onwards into an age of aviation equality.
This title explores the scope of women's activities in aviation, from the time of the Wright Brothers to the present day. After highlighting the earliest female aviators, as well as the trailblazers of the inter-war period such as Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart, the book goes on to examine the experience of women in aviation during the Second World War, including the American Women Airforce Service Pilots and those flying with the Air Transport Auxiliary. The post-war years are also covered and the title emphasizes the growth in women's participation in civil and military spheres of aviation -- by the last decades of the twentieth century, women had progressed even further, undertaking many of the jobs previously reserved for men, including space flight and combat flying. From the earliest women to obtain pilot's licenses to the female astronauts of the modern day, this is a concise introduction to the development of American and British women's roles in aviation.
Richly illustrated with paintings by noted aviation artists, this informative tribute to one hundred years of aviation ranges from the Wright brothers' first successful flight in 1903 to the present day, capturing the extraordinary innovations in aircraft and aviation technology over the past century.
First published in 1996, Mastering the Sky received acclaim as one of the best one-volume histories of aviation ever written. Beginning with ancient myths and man's aspiration to soar to the heavens, James Harrison takes us on a kaleidoscopic tour of early history, including tower jumpers, balloonists and barnstormers. After the achievement of the Wright Brothers, the story accelerates, parallel to the development of faster, stronger and more powerful aircraft. By the end of the book, man has flown to the moon and humans reside on space stations for months at a time. The history of aviation is a breathtaking story, told here by a masterful author who, despite his wealth of detail, never fails to convey the human interest, and a sense of pure exhilaration at our ability to conquer challenges.
Tells the stories of the first aviators and aircraft designers, recounts important contests, and air shows, and discusses important developments in early aviation
A new edition of a great, underappreciated classic of our time
Beryl Markham's West with the Night is a true classic, a book that deserves the same acclaim and readership as the work of her contemporaries Ernest Hemingway, Antoine de Saint-Exup ry, and Isak Dinesen. If the first responsibility of a memoirist is to lead a life worth writing about, Markham succeeded beyond all measure. Born Beryl Clutterbuck in the middle of England, she and her father moved to Kenya when she was a girl, and she grew up with a zebra for a pet; horses for friends; baboons, lions, and gazelles for neighbors. She made money by scouting elephants from a tiny plane. And she would spend most of the rest of her life in East Africa as an adventurer, a racehorse trainer, and an aviatrix--she became the first person to fly nonstop from Europe to America, the first woman to fly solo east to west across the Atlantic. Hers was indisputably a life full of adventure and beauty. And then there is the writing. When Hemingway read Markham's book, he wrote to his editor, Maxwell Perkins: She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer . . . She] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers . . . It is really a bloody wonderful book. With a new introduction by Sara Wheeler--one of Markham's few legitimate literary heirs--West with the Night should once again take its place as one of the world's great adventure stories.
