Do You like book East To The Dawn: The Life Of Amelia Earhart (1997)?
In the late twenties and the 1930s, Amelia Earhart was one of America's heroes--America's heroine, as Butler reminds us was the terminology at the time, when gendered terms were still regarded as the norm rather than a bit weird. What's left to us now is an image of Earhart just out of the cockpit, or about to step into it, and the memory of her disappearance on her around-the-world flight.But Earhart was much, much more than one image and one heartbreaking last flight. She was far more even than "just" a daredevil pilot in the years when aviation was establishing itself and just beginning to be commercially viable.Butler digs into Earhart's background, her family background as well as her challenges and achievements before that last, iconic, and tragically ended round-the-world flight.From her early life sent to live the winter months with her lonely grandmother in Atchison, Kansas, to the increasingly strained years with her parents and sister as her father drank and her parents' marriage deteriorated, she was the bright, adventurous light. She was also often the practical and responsible anchor in the strained family home, sacrificing many of her own opportunities to take care of her mother and sister. Yet along with pursuing a higher education despite the financial constraints, she also began flying early. Her parents had reconciled and her father moved them out to California, and Amelia Earhart discovered flying.What surprised me is that, after a number of bumps and challenges along the way, the career she established herself in was social work, and the city she did it in was Boston. Who saw that coming? I didn't! How she got from Miss Earhart of the Boston settlement house Dennison House, to Amelia Earhart, first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane, makes a fascinating story. From there, we embark on her other adventures, and on the equally public writing, public relations, and teaching that, for her, for the flyer who said she still considered herself a social worker, were an integral part of what she was doing.The real revelation, for me, is how involved she was in the early development of commercial aviation.Of course, we all know the ending, the flight from which she did not make it home. Even there, though, I learned quite a bit.Recommended.
—Lis Carey
Susan Butler's "East to the Dawn: the life of Amelia Earhart," is hands-down the best book I have read about Amelia Earhart. It was meticulously researched (it took her 10 years to research and write the book, and it shows) and also included insights into the life of this early 20th Century feminist that could only have been provided by a woman author. In much the same way that Doris Goodwin Kearns brought a woman's insight into the White House life of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt in "No Ordinary Time," Susan Butler does in writing about Amelia Earhart. Amelia's contributions to and hopes for women were far more fully described in this book than in the three others I have also read about her.Susan Butler also doesn't try to hide Amelia's blemishes, nor does she overstate the overbearing personality of George Putnam, her husband. She gives a very balanced account of their life together, which was sometimes rocky.Another very nice aspect of the book was the inclusion of some research not found or not described in the other biographies of Amelia, including some correspondence between Fred Noonan (her navigator on the last flight) and a female friend of his, whom Amelia and Fred visited on their stay in Miami, their last U.S. stop-over on the final flight. This correspondence sheds new light and casts additional uncertainty about Fred's problems with alcohol as a potential reason for their failure on the last leg of their round the world flight on which they disappeared, 70 years ago this month.The inclusion of materials on Gene Vidal (Gore's father), who served as Secretary to Commerce for Aviation Affairs during the FDR administration, was also extremely interesting and contributed to a fuller understanding of the work involved in preparing for the Final Flight. Amelia's relationship with Gene was also the human element that I usually find extremely interesting in non-fiction and biographical books.If Amelia interests you at all and you are only going to read one book about her, make this the one.
—Brian
An excellent updated biography of Earhart that adds family letters and diaries to the historical record. Butler describes the personality of Earhart in her own words, using quotes from those who knew her to make an author's judgment from among conflicting descriptions. Earhart was a meticulous planner and experienced pilot, who nonetheless has personality quirks of her own. The book also has the best description that I've seen of her involvement with Purdue University and the Purdue Research Foundation in teaching -- and funding the Lockheed Electra that she used for her final voyage.Butler also describes the final flight around the world using documents from Earhart's husband and others involved first-hand, dismissing stories of Japanese captivity and dwelling on likely equipment failures. She leaves the mystery of Fred Noonan (was he extremely competent or was he drunk?) unanswered. All in all, a well-told story from childhood through Earhart's disappearance over the Pacific Ocean. And it is done in a manner to be inspirational to any youngster facing the obstacles of their upbringing.
—Andrew