Come Fly the World
The Women of Pan Am at War and Peace
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Icon Books
Published:8th Apr '21
Should be back in stock very soon
This hardback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£10.99(9781785787799)
** Chosen as a May 2021 pick for The Fearless Book Club by Nobel Peace Prize-Winner, Malala Yousafzai **
Travel writer Julia Cooke's exhilarating portrait of Pan Am stewardesses in the Mad Men era.
Glamour, danger, liberation: in the Jet Age, Pan Am offered young women the world. Come Fly the World tells the story of the stewardesses who served on the iconic Pan American Airways between 1966 and 1975 - and of the unseen diplomatic role they played on the world stage.
Alongside the glamour was real danger, as they flew soldiers to and from Vietnam and staffed Operation Babylift - the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children during the fall of Saigon. Cooke's storytelling weaves together the true stories of women like Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few African American stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of a jet-set life.
In the process, Cooke shows how the sexualized coffee-tea-or-me stereotype was at odds with the importance of what they did, and with the freedom, power and sisterhood they achieved.
...In confident, clear-eyed, multi-layered prose, Julia Cooke brings to life the true stories of unforgettable Pan-Am stewardesses who defied convention, to seek more from life than they were given. This is a well-researched and fascinating history of air travel, gender equality, and so much more. -- – Rachel Khong, author of GOODBYE VITAMIN
Come Fly the World is a pop passport to another time. Take a social history flight with the women of Pan Am. -- – Lily Koppel, author of New York Times bestseller THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB
Before second-wave feminism came along to challenge the admissions policies of law, medical, and business schools, there were stewardesses-women every bit as daring and determined as their later counterparts in the professions, and having more fun... [Come Fly the World is] a rollicking, rambunctious ride down the runway of mid-century modern life. -- – Megan Marshall, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning MARGARET FULLER: A New American Life and ELIZABETH BISHOP: A Miracle for Breakfast
This engrossing account, which reads like a novel, offers a combination of riveting personal stories and little-known history, and will draw in readers from the first page. -- - Library Journal
'Here's the chance to travel-in time and in the sky-vicariously. Julia Cooke's intimate storytelling weaves together the real-life tales of a memorable cast of Pan Am flight attendants as they embraced the liberation of their new jet-set life. The nonfiction work also unearths little-known stories about how Pan Am flight attendants went above and beyond, including their role in the Vietnam War.'
ISBN: 9781785786884
Dimensions: 222mm x 144mm x 29mm
Weight: 420g
288 pages