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Summary
Summary
Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) captured the hearts of America after becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928. Nine years later, her disappearance on an around-the-world flight brought her extraordinary life to an abrupt and mysterious end.
Based on a decade of archival research through Earhart's letters, journals, and diaries, and drawing on interviews with the aviator's friends and relatives, East to the Dawn provides the most authoritative and richly textured account of both Earhart's record-setting aviation career and her personal life: her early years with her grandparents, her experiences as a nurse and social worker, her famous marriage to publisher George Putnam, and her secret affair with Gene Vidal, head of the Bureau of Air Commerce. As the Los Angeles Times raved, East to the Dawn is a "fully realized portrait of a truly remarkable woman."
Author Notes
Susan Butler is a journalist who lives in Central Florida.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
By dying while still glamorous, the 40-year-old Amelia Earhart clinched her membership in the exclusive club of American icons. She certainly deserved it, more so perhaps than some of her fellow members: in addition to her record-breaking career as a pilot, she was a powerful advocate of women's rights (inspiring even Eleanor Roosevelt), a dedicated social worker, an airline founder, a lecturer at Purdue, a writer and even a fashion designer. As freelance financial journalist Butler's new biography demonstrates, Earhart had a tendency to dazzle all who came in contact with her. Unfortunately, Butler herself is so starstruck that what should be a compelling story becomes an effort for readers to get through. Her pedestrian and cliché-ridden prose ("She drove a car like a bat out of hell") occasionally turns comic ("People flowed through the house in a steady trickle, growing heavier on weekends"). And Butler's fascination with Amelia's dress sense quickly grows tedious: "Her hair blew in the breeze above a bronze and yellow silk scarf draped around her neck; her short-sleeved tan silk jersey shirt matched the color of her jodhpurs." Nevertheless, the sheer historical thrill of her disappearance over the Pacific in 1937, with the final, chilling radio transmission"We are now running north and south"makes for some excitement. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Susan Butler spent 10 years researching and writing this biography, which marks the centennial of Amelia Earhart's birth. Although Earhart's life has been documented on television and in other books, Butler was allowed access to family diaries and discovered an unpublished biography by a close friend. Following Earhart's 1938 disappearance during her attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world, rumors circulated that she had been assigned a secret spy mission and was captured and tortured by the Japanese. Fukiko Aoki, who became the Japanese bureau chief for Newsweek in 1984, investigated this rumor as extensively as possible. Because nothing of what Aoki wrote was ever translated into English, her conclusions--that the plane carrying Earhart and her navigator must have sunk to the bottom of the sea--received scant attention outside Japan. With its inclusion here, Butler hopes to put to rest all lingering doubts. --Jennifer Henderson
Choice Review
For most people, the name of Amelia Earhart conjures up the image of an appealing young female who disappeared into the vast Pacific Ocean while trying to complete a risky around-the-world flight in 1937. At the time of her death, Earhart was a married woman approaching her 40th birthday. She was a very public figure--confidante of Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the widely known publisher George Putnam, businesswomen, and close friend of some of the most influential aviation officials in the nation. Her proclivity for wearing masculine trousers became something of a national fashion. Clearly, Earhart was far more than a passing headline, and her life reveals a fascinatingly complex, avant-garde personality. Fortunately, this biography does her justice. Butler, a journalist, incorporates a variety of untapped sources including family diaries, letters, and interviews in this highly readable history of Earhart's life. The interviews include commentary from Gore Vidal, whose father Gene served as the Roosevelt administration's chief aviation official and who probably carried on a liaison with Amelia. Butler does a good job of analyzing Amelia's family background, integrating her early years as social worker with her later career as aviatrix and feminist. She also tapped previously unused Japanese sources to help dispel the absurd rumors still swirling about Earhart's disappearance. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries. General readers; undergraduates through faculty. R. E. Bilstein; University of Houston--Clear Lake
Kirkus Review
This exhaustive new biography, coming on the centennial of Earhart's birth, throws new light on many of the more controversial elements of the aviator's life and death. Earhart was a self-possessed and downright adventurous young woman. Her two enduring passions were flying and social work, endeavors that both seem to have captivated the feminine imagination in her time. By the time she was 25, Earhart ``had become one of those early mythical heroes of the sky whom people came to see at air meets and dreamed of emulating.'' She ``vagabonded'' across the country solo in a plane and, with the help of her husband, publishing giant George Putnam, had the book documenting her tale out on the stands less than two weeks after completion of the feat. The list of her flight achievements is lengthy and impressive. But it is the cool yet inspired marriage between Putnam and Earhart, two inveterate adventurers, that lies at the core of Butler's biography. Putnam was a brilliant media spin-doctor who relentlessly promoted his wife's image. Butler's study raises some provocative questions (Was Earhart a feminist or just a singular human being? Were her feats victories for women everywhere or victories for pure heroism?) without convincingly answering them. But if the study isn't always persuasive in its answers, it is filled with wonderful details about Earhart's glamorous lifestyle and the wild, dangerous world of early aviators. Earhart disappeared at sea in 1938, trying to be the first pilot to circumnavigate the earth at its widest point, before turning 40. Even the manner of her death contrived to sustain America's fascination with her. Butler's flat writing style somewhat undermines her portrait of Earhart's singular emotional and physical courage. Nonetheless, the still enthralling figure of the aviator--wearing her signature trousers and jacket, blond hair and silk scarf blowing, beckoning to the free spirit in all of us--does powerfully come through. (b&w photos, not seen)
Library Journal Review
Anna Fields reads this workmanlike account of famed aviator Earhart with clarity and little drama. Earhart had drive, daring, and a conviction that women could equal men at any task. She lectured often on that theme between her record-breaking flights across oceans and continents from 1927 to 1937. Butler praises her uncritically and ignores others' speculations that Earhart was unfaithful to her husband but only with men; she wasn't sick and exhausted on flights; and her disappearance in 1937 was the result of merely running out of gas while lost over the Pacific. Butler's title suggests but cannot equal West with the Night, an aviation classic (in several audio versions, e.g., LJ 11/1/92). Yet, overall, this tribute to a courageous woman is a welcome addition. Recommended for popular biography collections.Gordon Blackwell, Eastchester, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
