Last Flight [Paperback]

Amelia Earhart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 9, 1996

Earhart's account of her ill-fated last flight around the world, begun in 1937, remains one of the most moving and absorbing adventure stories of all time. Compiled here are dispatches, letters, diary entries and charts she sent to her husband at each stage of her trip.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This reprint of the chronicle of what turned out to be her last flying mission is sure to win new fans for the famed aviatrix. Earhart set out to circle the globe in 1937, with the aid of navigator Fred Noonan, and was lost after taking off from Lae, New Guinea, only 7000 miles short of the journey's completion. This narrative, assembled by Earhart's husband, the publisher G. P. Putnam, from her letters, diary and dispatches, reveals the pilot to be a cheerful, gallant soul, ever responsive to the earth's beauties. Entries in her log book are as likely to refer to rainbows and the fantastic shapes of clouds as to readings from her instrument panel. Her thoughts on equal opportunities for women are timely and inspiring 51 years later: "Women should do for themselves what men have already doneand occasionally what men have not donethereby establishing themselves as persons, and perhaps encouraging other women toward greater independence of thought and action." Unfortunately, the author is not so forward-thinking when it comes to race (black mechanics look "considerably simian"), although she decries what Americans did to Africans, "these proud people, so handsome and intelligent in the setting of their own country." Given the marvelous, stirring content of this book, a more detailed foreword, including a capsule biography, would be appreciated by a generation of readers unfamiliar with Earhart's accomplishments. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 140 pages
• Publisher: Crown Trade; 1st edition (July 9, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609800329
• ISBN-13: 978-0609800324
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #276,572 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( E ) > Earhart, Amelia

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars reality, May 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Last Flight (American Biography Series) (Library Binding)

In all of the guessing and all of the opinions about AE, her goals and her loss, I'm thankful the this pilot was a fine writer so we can see how she felt things developed. As a writer with some experience in aviation history as applied to women, I realize both the process her actual words went through to get on the page and the fact that her husband had a great deal of impact on the outcome of her last book. Still, "Last Flight" is in keeping with material published before her death, when she did have more control over the process. "Last Flight" gives each one of us the opportunity to make our own decision about her life and her end.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "My Last Flight -- in Amelia's Own Words...", September 13, 2007

By 

Russell A. Rohde MD "Owl" (West Covina, California USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

"Last Flight", Amelia Earhart, Hartcourt, Brace & Co., N.Y. 1937 (1st Ed.), HC 229 pgs., 27 B/W Ilustr./photos. 5 1/2" x 6 1/8"

Written by Amelia, with book arranged by George P. Putnam, this is the original 1937 publication & it has many excellent B/W photographs (not seen elsewhere) of Amelia and her Lockheed Electra monoplane. It has 20 chapters, each episode chronicles AE's life as she embarked on a novel globe-encircling plane flight begun at Oakland, CA and takes us to her successful lift-off at Lae, New Guinea on July 2, 1937, accompanied by navigator Fred Noonan. With 2/3 of her mission accomplished & only 2,556 miles remaining, their plane vanishes.

This is one of three books authored by AE and certainly the most revealing of all. Unlike other books about AE, this one reveals much more of her personal life experiences, charm, expectations, and dreams -- the book defoliates a lot of the mystery and hearsay recited by others, albeit from her personal perspective and that of GPP, her publicist-husband.

The book provides details of her flight route and stop-overs in the US and across the seas to South America, Africa, India, Bangkok, Singapore, Bandoeng, Australia and New Guinea with notable B/W photographs at the stoppages and of her gracious receptions by named notables in foreign lands. I think we gain a keener & more sincere appreciation of her abilities as a aviatrix, adenturer, planner & journalist and we're not so mired down in Monday-morning quarterbacking of her skill limitations, so less wont to engrave negativity onto her career, something encountered, excessively (I think) in many later books on her life. That enveiglement: a world map, scale, compass & AE's stopping points imprinted inside the front & back covers of her book is extremely helpful!

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars With Rosalind Russell and Fred MacMurray!?!, January 11, 2010

By 

Bob God "Bob God" (Summerland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last Flight (Paperback)

The great aviatrix in her own words.

Well, almost.

G.P. Putnam puts a twist in it and hints at the answer to everyones' question by naming the book after Howard Hughs' expositional movie of the True Story.

The U.S. government had promised since 1938 to declassify the AE file in 1999 but more than ten years after that date the file remains labelled, "Eyes Only."

This book is like a window into the Soul of Amelia.

Anyone interested in finding out what really happened to her, however, should find the RKO Radio Pictures film of the same name, starring Rosalind Russell as Amelia and Fred My-Three-Sons MacMurray as Fred Noonan.

Good luck, though, since so much classified information was revealed in the movie that only a few subterranean copies still exist.