Award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist Laurie Gwen Shapiro has fulfilled her ambition to bring Amelia Earhart back to well-deserved attention. In THE AVIATOR AND THE SHOWMAN, she details the many steps upward in the career of a woman whose early adventures included sliding down a butter-greased board and declaring, despite a bruised lip, that it was “just like flying!”

The urge to take to the air evolved from fascination to reality as Earhart took flying lessons while in college. The true push would come from a publisher, George P. Putnam, who determined to focus on the young lady and make her the first female airplane passenger to cross the Atlantic. Earhart agreed, but she insisted that she have a role in piloting. He recognized her strength and grit, a self-spoken female of the flapper era, whose enthusiasm and well-cropped hair would mark her as a nonconformist happy to approach the camera and reporters.

"In this meticulously researched biography, the narrative steadily builds to the climactic flight for which Earhart is sadly best remembered... Shapiro offers readers an intimate, enthralling account of Earhart and Putnam..."

The flight --- as attention seeker Putnam had intended --- brought financial gains to his corporation, along with instant fame for Earhart. She was dubbed “Lady Lindy” by the press, connecting her with Charles Lindbergh. She was photographed with her many flying machines, including an advertising rig promoting Beech-Nut chewing gum, and with celebrities as notable as Eleanor Roosevelt, decked in furry shawls and sharing wide grins. She would marry Putnam, offering a sense of power and personal respite to both. Her numerous “firsts” made her a media darling, prompted and supported behind the scenes by her ambitious spouse.

In this meticulously researched biography, the narrative steadily builds to the climactic flight for which Earhart is sadly best remembered --- the attempted circumnavigation of the globe in 1937 that led to her disappearance.

Shapiro offers readers an intimate, enthralling account of Earhart and Putnam --- their love, mutual respect, shared benefits and encouragement as the world moved rapidly to new levels of technology spurred by such visionaries. As women were gradually demanding rights and assuming new authoritative roles, Earhart provided education, charity and pride to her uprising sisters, with Putnam avidly supporting her share of the limelight.

Shapiro amply demonstrates that in an age when trains were the stars of the transportation scene, Earhart and her aviation cohort --- alongside Putnam navigating the rapidly expanding realm of publicity --- gave Americans a reason to look upward and imagine fresh world exploration and technical conquest.