The aviator and the showman Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the marriage that made an American icon

Review by Booklist Review

In this gossipy dual biography of aviator Amelia Earhart and her husband, publisher George Putnam, Shapiro (The Stowaway, 2018) sets out to right what she purports has been a biographical history of errors "about every single aspect" of Earhart's life and death. Drawing on archived records, diaries, and interviews with the couple and those who knew them, Shapiro crafts a narrative that is often surprisingly intimate about their thoughts and feelings. She builds a case that Putnam was a cunning mastermind of Earhart's image, while Earhart, a pilot whose technical skill at times was overwhelmed by her husband's ambition, was less a dedicated aviator than someone determined to stay in the public eye and keep "the money flowing." There is much here about their romantic relationship, with Shapiro focusing heavily on Putnam's first marriage to Dorothy Binney, a Crayola heiress, which ended amidst accusations about his infidelity with Earhart. While certainly presenting a new perspective on Earhart, Putnam emerges as a stronger character and someone deserving of his own dedicated biography.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The tragic death of Amelia Earhart owed as much to her husband's Svengali-like machinations as to her limited piloting skills, according to this canny dual biography. Journalist Shapiro (The Stowaway) recaps the lives of Earhart and George Putnam, the latter a New York City publishing executive who, in 1928, recruited Earhart, a Boston social worker and part-time pilot, to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean (as a passenger) with the goal of ghostwriting her memoirs. He then became her business manager, lining up speaking tours and sponsorships (and blackballing other women fliers). Smitten by her "steely gray-blue eyes," he eventually persuaded Earhart to marry him. The Great Depression made the couple dependent on her earning power, which necessitated further aviation stunts like her 1932 success in making the first solo trans-Atlantic flight by a woman. Unfortunately, financial need also motivated her fatal 1937 attempt, strenuously promoted by Putnam, to fly around the world, which tested her talents beyond their limit. She and her navigator ran out of fuel (and plunged to their deaths) while trying to find Howland Island mainly because Earhart's inept handling of her plane's radio prevented her from getting a directional bearing, according to Shapiro. The author's appealingly flawed Earhart is high-minded and courageous but also overconfident and careless; Putnam, meanwhile, is a narcissistic and manipulative con man who once staged his own kidnapping for publicity. This nuanced reprisal of Earhart's life certainly tarnishes her reputation, but thereby makes her saga all the more captivating. (July)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A groundbreaking aviator. Journalist Shapiro, unsatisfied with "whitewashed" biographies of Amelia Earhart, offers an evenhanded portrait of the iconic aviator, focusing on her relationship with publishing tycoon George P. Putnam. In 1921, Earhart was living in Los Angeles when she took her first flight and felt "unexpectedly" drawn to flying; lessons led to performances in air rodeos and some local acclaim. In 1927, while teaching English in a Boston settlement house, she was also working at a fledging airfield, when she came to Putnam's attention. A wheeler-dealer known as the publishing world's P.T. Barnum, he was looking for a woman to sign on as a passenger for a transatlantic flight. Immediately, he felt smitten with the charming young Earhart; she was drawn to the adventure. To her surprise, the flight made her a star. "Wherever Amelia went," Shapiro writes, "she ignited a frenzy of excitement that not only thrilled audiences but also allowed George to revel in her reflected glory." She took tea with George Bernard Shaw, sat in a box at Wimbledon, dined with Lady Astor, and was showered with ticker tape in parades in New York and Boston. Putnam became her wily manager, tireless publicist, and, in 1931, after repeated proposals, her husband. He profited financially, to be sure, from her feats: the longest nonstop flight by a woman and the fastest crossing of the Atlantic; the first woman to fly solo nonstop from coast to coast, setting a woman's speed record; the first person to fly solo across the Pacific. In 1937, she embarked on her most challenging--and final--flight: around the world. Capturing the tension and peril of early flying, Shapiro conveys, as well, Earhart's unflagging ambition and courage. A sympathetic, well-researched biography. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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