E book Evaluate
The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage That Made an American Icon
By Laurie Gwen ShapiroViking: 512 pages, $35If you purchase books linked on our web site, The Occasions could earn a fee from Bookshop.org, whose charges help unbiased bookstores.
“Sex, violent death, and mystery. If your life has one of these things people might be interested. If it has two, now you’re tabloid fodder. If it has three, you’re Amelia Earhart.” So begins Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s attractive “The Aviator and the Showman,” a vibrant account of the courtship and union of the well-known pilot and her writer husband whose intrusive administration of his spouse’s profession could have price her life. Shapiro dexterously untangles the Gordian knot of their entwined passions, shared ambitions and enterprise backside strains.
The affianced Earhart and the married George Palmer Putnam met in his Manhattan workplace within the spring of 1928. She was 30, he a decade older. Whereas she’d grown up within the Midwest and frolicked in California, she was presently residing in Boston, employed as a social employee and indulging an enthusiasm for flying in her spare time. Though she was nonetheless honing her abilities, her tall, lean magnificence, capped with a tousled jazz-age bob, caught Putnam’s consideration. The earlier yr the publishing exec had rushed out Charles Lindbergh’s bestselling “We,” which detailed Lindy’s solo flight throughout the Atlantic; he hoped to attain the same success for Earhart. Would she be prepared to hitch a experience with a crew that summer season?
Shapiro then circles again to their biographies. Earhart was born right into a solidly middle-class household in Kansas, near her youthful sister, Muriel, however her father’s job failures and alcoholism uprooted the Earharts, undermining the ladies’ educations. Earhart was stuffed with mischief and journey, a pure chief with a modesty instilled by her mom, who was vulnerable to invoking her Quaker background when it suited her. Regardless of monetary insecurity, each mother and father inspired their daughters to pursue their goals, nonetheless unconventional — their feminist, progressive spirit guided Earhart like a compass.
A stint in Toronto kindled her want to fly. After one other transfer to Los Angeles, she took classes from a feminine teacher, studying fundamentals, however it was a pastime in comparison with her chosen vocation. She was additionally juggling males, amongst them the boyish Sam Chapman, whose proposal she’d tentatively accepted, to a rich 64-year-old who showered her with dear presents, similar to an vehicle. (Earhart was inclined to luxurious gadgets, which Putnam later exploited). Shapiro’s tone is conversational, luring us right into a wealthy story about American media.
Her portrait of Putnam is equally magnetic. A big, expansive man and junior accomplice in a dynastic agency, “Gyp” had a knack for packaging authors as mass-market merchandise, adept at negotiating offers from London to New York to Hollywood. His troubled marriage to Dorothy Binney Putnam, an heiress, didn’t restrain him from skimming her fortune to defray his bills. He recruited Earhart to turn into the primary girl to cross the Atlantic by air, although she spent the length squeezed between gasoline tanks, “feeling like a faker due to George’s excessive promotion of her as a pilot.” Her return to the U.S. was a Putnam-orchestrated extravaganza that eclipsed the flight: “Wherever Amelia went, she ignited a frenzy of excitement that not only enraptured audiences but also allowed George to revel in her reflected glory,” Shapiro notes. “He was invigorated by her carefree and glamorous aura. Amelia was the ‘it girl’… urbane, relaxed, and effortlessly charming.” Their affair triggered Putnam’s divorce, and the pair married in 1931, residing at his property in Rye, N.Y.
“The Aviator and the Showman” is a lavish, layered narrative, a primer on early aviation and the transition of publishing from genteel carriage commerce to an business more and more reliant on blockbusters. Putnam mastered the second; to today, firms demand photogenic authors, high-stakes publicity, spreadsheet tweaks and magical considering. From Massive 5 homes to small presses, from Amazon to Barnes & Noble to pocket unbiased shops: We’re all descendants of George Putnam.
Earhart by no means misplaced her eye for engaging males, although, tipping Shapiro into the occasional cliché or purple flourish. “Captain Manning’s handsome good looks and gentlemanliness greatly appealed to Amelia,” she writes. “Sam Chapman who? Could a budding romantic connection from these intoxicating nights at sea grow after they docked?” Putnam was jealous of his spouse’s flirtations, and tinkered along with her schedule accordingly.
Creator Laurie Gwen Shapiro
(Franco Vogt)
Shapiro chronicles the couple’s attain, as Putnam stamped Amelia’s imprimatur onto (white) American womanhood, a prototype nonetheless amongst us: function mannequin for young women, skilled and sensible, environment friendly by day, elegant by evening. He spun her fable into trend and merchandise, even a short editorial gig at Cosmopolitan. (Earhart cherished poetry however was no gifted author herself.) They purchased costly automobiles, a trendy home in Toluca Lake and Amelia’s signature Lockheed Electra. Greenback indicators in his eyes, Putnam helped Earhart assemble a crew for her 1937 international trek, together with her trusted technical advisor Paul Mantz, and Fred Noonan, a seasoned navigator with a style for liquor. The writer’s recreation of Earhart’s last odyssey, manipulated by Putnam’s controlling persona, will appear acquainted, but Shapiro teases out two elements: the Electra’s defective transmissions and Earhart’s limitations (she by no means bothered to be taught Morse code).
“The Aviator and the Showman” leaves little question about Earhart’s disappearance: She misjudged her gasoline reserves, panicked and crashed close to tiny Howland atoll. The wreck of the Electra sits on the Pacific’s ground, Shapiro asserts, at a degree deeper than the ruins of the Titanic. One reporter’s “most scathing critique was directed toward George Palmer Putnam, whom he saw as motivated more by profit than by his wife’s safety, a sentiment fueled by seeing cabled messages pressuring Amelia to hasten her journey for a lucrative radio deal.”
Putnam’s post-Earhart life was a curler coaster of money woes and notoriety; the next yr he staged his personal kidnapping, alienating his stodgy publishing group. His urge for food for publicity was insatiable. “The Aviator and the Showman” reveals the magnitude of our celeb worship, the marvel of what we don’t perceive. Shapiro captures the fun of a leap into the unknown, recalling the works of Jon Krakauer and Sebastian Junger.
Cain is a e book critic and the writer of a memoir, “This Boy’s Faith: Notes From a Southern Baptist Upbringing.” He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
