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<\/p>\nIn the 1920s, in \u201cThe Crack-Up,\u201d F. Scott Fitzgerald declared, people \u201cthought of their old best dreams. Maybe there was a way out by flying, maybe our restless blood could find frontiers in the illimitable air.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born in 1897 in Atchison, Kan. \u2014 a small town with limited opportunities, especially for women \u2014 Amelia Earhart decided aviation could satisfy her restless blood. In 1928, she became the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an airplane.<\/p>\n
Four years later, Earhart cemented her status as a national celebrity by becoming the first woman to make a solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic. In 1937, during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe, she disappeared near Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean. Neither her plane nor her body has ever been found, fueling speculation about her fate that continues to this day.<\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Aviator And The Showman,\u201d Laurie Gwen Shapiro, a journalist, documentary filmmaker and author of \u201cThe Stowaway,\u201d revisits Earhart\u2019s life through the lens of her relationship with publisher George Putnam. A charming, charismatic and well-connected promoter, he brought a slew of bestsellers to G.P. Putnam\u2019s Sons, including, \u201cWe,\u201d Charles Lindbergh\u2019s account of his flight from New York to Paris.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Aviator And The Showman\u201d is, alas, not well-written. And a more attentive editor might have pruned digressions about, for example, Newfoundlanders\u2019 favorite foods, the carved wooden chest George gave Amelia and the couple\u2019s attendance at movie premieres. Most important, Shapiro relies heavily on interviews with acquaintances, friends and family members \u2014 often conducted decades after Amelia disappeared \u2014 whose claims are difficult or impossible to confirm.<\/p>\n
Shapiro\u2019s Putnam is a cad and a con man. Married when he met Amelia, he was \u2014 and remained \u2014 a narcissistic adulterer. According to an author of a book Putnam published, George was \u201dalways calculating, always figuring out how to make use of people, always with a commercial end in mind.” Elinor Smith, an aviator, deemed him an egomaniacal liar.<\/p>\n
Familiar with Amelia\u2019s assertion that George would \u201cdo anything he thinks will protect my interests,\u201d Smith maintained that there\u2019s a difference \u201cbetween protecting interests and sick and twisted intimidation.\u201d \u201cMany would agree today,\u201d Shapiro adds. Acknowledging that Putnam was genuinely devoted to Earhart, Shapiro suggests that he pushed her to make what turned out to be her last flight, in anticipation of a big pay day, even though she wasn\u2019t adequately prepared.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Much of the content in “The Aviator and the Showman” is based in interviews with secondary sources done years after Earhart’s disappearance. (Viking)<\/p>\n
The relationship between Putnam and Earhart, Shapiro demonstrates, \u201cwas a complex mix of love, tension, and mutual ambition.\u201d A decade older than Amelia, George may have been a father figure for her, Shapiro speculates. Muriel Earhart maintained that her sister loved him, but also believed the marriage would \u201callow her to keep flying.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the 1920s, in \u201cThe Crack-Up,\u201d F. Scott Fitzgerald declared, people \u201cthought of their old best dreams. Maybe…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":48652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-48651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114817585978828328","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}