The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage That Made an American Icon

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)