cover image Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism

Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism

Susan Ware. W. W. Norton & Company, $22 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-393-03551-3

Basing her analysis of early 20th-century feminism on aviator Amelia Earhart, Ware's interesting, innovative portrait initially becomes mired in biographical information. After building a historical framework, however, the author moves efficiently between Earhart's activities and the achievements of such other individualistic heroines as Eleanor Roosevelt. Earhart is presented as a courageous, poised figure as Ware ( Beyond Suffrage ) examines her membership in women's organizations, including a group of women pilots called the Ninety Nines, and explores public reaction to her record-breaking flights. While acknowledging that Earhart's then-unconventional balance of career and marriage (to publisher G. P. Putnam) was eased by having household staff, Ware nonetheless praises her as a champion of new roles for women. That Earhart is remembered primarily for her disappearance at age 39 on a 1937 round-the-world flight is indicative of American culture's inattention to female accomplishments then and now, argues Ware: ``The intent here is to rescue Amelia from the clutches of the cult of her disappearance and refocus on her life itself, especially its sense of . . . endless possibility where women are concerned.'' Photos. (Nov.)