Customer Reviews

Last Flight

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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.

"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!

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.

Man, this book rocked out. Like, Amelia Earhart was da bomb. Man, when she died, that was like, so bush. You know, I bet she's still alive somewhere, man. Like on some pacific island somewhere just chillin with the natives, sippin on a drink, yeah boy! She be bumpin' with some hot guy. Yeah.