Amelia Earhart: A Biography

by Doris L. Rich

Overview

She died mysteriously before she was forty. Yet in the last decade of her life Amelia Earhart soared from obscurity to fame as the best-known female aviator in the world. She set record after record—among them, the first trans-Atlantic solo flight by a woman, a flight that launched Earhart on a double career as a fighter for women's rights and a tireless crusader for commercial air travel. Doris L. Rich's exhaustively researched biography downplays the “What Happened to Amelia Earhart?” myth by disclosing who Amelia Earhart really was: a woman of three centuries, born in the nineteenth, pioneering in the twentieth, and advocating ideals and dreams relevant to the twenty-first.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781560987253
Publisher:	Smithsonian Institution Press
Publication date:	10/17/1996
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.03(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

Doris L. Rich's varied career as a reporter, writer, photographer, and teacher has taken her all over the world, from Michigan to Guam, Korea, Shanghai, Bangladesh, and Africa. She is also the author of Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator (Smithsonian, 1993).

Editorial Reviews

[A] fast paced, richly detailed biography.”—Publishers Weekly

“Ms. Rich vividly evoke[s] the tragic aspect of Amelia Earhart.”—New York Times Book Review, Notable Book

“Earhart emerges as a complex, controversial, and fascinating flesh-and-blood woman of many facets. . . .Well-researched and intelligently written.”—Chicago Tribune

“Defines Amelia Earhart by her courage, generosity, and determination, and not by the way her life ended.”—American Heritage

"Rich's portrait reveals a determined, independent woman, brave enough 'to go where no one had gone and to do what no one had done' ... [and] illuminates the public and private life of a legendary flier, bringing her back to earth as a courageous woman who dreamed and dared all." —Christian Science Monitor

"Rich is a gifted writer ... A fascinating and inspirational tale of Earhart's fight for equal rights, international peace, and a world where flying would be accessible to all." —San Francisco Chronicle

From the Publisher

Amelia Earhart was not only a famous aviator and flight record-breaker, she was also a motivational speaker, devoted child, socialite, and feminist. The woman who most people think of as a tragic figure lost in her quest for aviation history comes alive in this fascinating biography well-read by Van Dusen.

Amelia, known as AE to her close friends and family, grew up in the Midwest in a fairly affluent home. Summers were spent with her grandparents, amid wealth and social standing. During her teenage years, however, struggles by her father to cease his heavy drinking led to financial difficulties and embarrassment for Amelia, her mother, and sister. By the time Amelia was in college, the family could barely make ends meet. Her mother, and later Amelia, worked hard to maintain the impression of affluence.

Throughout her adult life Amelia would, like most children of alcoholics, find excuses for her father and attempt to support her mother both emotionally and financially. Her first exposure to flight came as a result of a trip to an airfield in California with her father. From then on she would let nothing stop her from achieving her goals in aviation.

The successes Amelia Earhart achieved in aviation are well-known and documented. What makes this book different is the unknown facts unearthed about her through letters, journals, receipts, and many newspaper and magazine articles. The fact that she was kind and considerate to the children who approached her; that she was soft-spoken and articulate, but did not like to call attention to herself; that she wore well-tailored clothes and silk blouses under her aviator jacket; and managed to find a place for herself in the predominantly male world of aviation as well as "high" society. She spoke for women's rights, not only in the field of aviation, but in any professional field and, most importantly to her, in the home.

Listening to this book reminds one that the world lost not only a good pilot but a gifted individual on the tragic last flight of Amelia Earhart. (January)