Come Fly the World
The Jet-age Story of the Women of Pan Am
HarperCollins · Print & ebook · April 26, 2022
Glamour, danger, liberation: in a Mad Men era of commercial flight, Pan Am World Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out, and wanted up Required to have a college degree, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service officer, a jet-age stewardess serving on iconic Pan Am between 1966 and 1975 also had to be between 5′3″ and 5′9", between 105 and 140 pounds, and under twenty-six years old at the time of hire.
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- Who it’s for
- A jet-age aviation history with women at the center and plenty of Pan Am atmosphere.
- Genres
- Women's Lives, Aviation & Nautical Lives, Vietnam War History
- Published
- HarperCollins, April 26, 2022
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Glamour, danger, liberation: in a Mad Men era of commercial flight, Pan Am World Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out, and wanted up Required to have a college degree, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service officer, a jet-age stewardess serving on iconic Pan Am between 1966 and 1975 also had to be between 5′3″ and 5′9", between 105 and 140 pounds, and under twenty-six years old at the time of hire.
Continue reading
Cooke’s intimate storytelling weaves together the real-life stories of a memorable cast of characters, from small-town girl Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few Black stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of their new jet-set life. Cooke brings to light the story of Pan Am stewardesses’ role in the Vietnam War, as the airline added runs from Saigon to Hong Kong for planeloads of weary young soldiers straight from the battlefields who were off for five days of R&R, and then flown back to war. Finally, with Operation Babylift—the dramatic evacuation of two thousand children during the fall of Saigon—the book’s special cast of stewardesses unites to play an extraordinary role on the world stage.
Jet Age Lives
A jet-age aviation history with women at the center and plenty of Pan Am atmosphere.
Come here for
- Jet-age aviation and the Pan Am orbit
- Women’s histories with a story-driven historical lens
Expect
- History that reads through people, not just planes
- Commercial aviation context without the museum voice
Where it sits
| Vietnam War History | 50% |
|---|---|
| Women's Lives | 24% |
| Aviation & Nautical Lives | 23% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Black & African American Lives
- Women's Lives
- How Transportation Works
- Vietnam War History
Show all 8 publisher categories
- Military Aviation
- 20th-Century America
- Social History
- Women's History
- Authors
- Julia Cooke
- Publisher
- HarperCollins
- Published
- April 26, 2022
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- Black & African American Lives