Making History in the Air: An Interactive Biography of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart

By Herman Melville

*Includes over 10 minutes of video and audio about the lives and famous flights of Lindbergh and Earhart

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles River Editors
• Release date: Mar 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781625396761

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. Following a period of financial trouble, the Melville family moved from New York City to Albany, where Allan, Herman’s father, entered the fur business. When Allan died in 1832, the family struggled to make ends meet, and Herman and his brothers were forced to leave school in order to work. A small inheritance enabled Herman to enroll in school from 1835 to 1837, during which time he studied Latin and Shakespeare. The Panic of 1837 initiated another period of financial struggle for the Melvilles, who were forced to leave Albany. After publishing several essays in 1838, Melville went to sea on a merchant ship in 1839 before enlisting on a whaling voyage in 1840. In July 1842, Melville and a friend jumped ship at the Marquesas Islands, an experience the author would fictionalize in his first novel, Typee (1845). He returned home in 1844 to embark on a career as a writer, finding success as a novelist with the semi-autobiographical novels Typee and Omoo (1847), befriending and earning the admiration of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and publishing his masterpiece Moby-Dick in 1851. Despite his early success as a novelist and writer of such short stories as “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno,” Melville struggled from the 1850s onward, turning to public lecturing and eventually settling into a career as a customs inspector in New York City. Towards the end of his life, Melville’s reputation as a writer had faded immensely, and most of his work remained out of print until critical reappraisal in the early twentieth century recognized him as one of America’s finest writers.

Book preview

1935

Introduction

Introduction

Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974)

If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. – Charles Lindbergh

Everyone has read about history’s most important people and events in dense textbooks and classrooms, but words can only say so much. In Charles River Editors’ Interactive Biography series, history comes to life in video and audio, allowing people to not only read history but truly experience it, through the eyes and ears of the people who were there.

In many ways, Charles Lindbergh represented the best and worst of America during the first half of the 20th century. Lindbergh became famous for being an aviation pioneer whose solo flight across the Atlantic captured the imagination of an entire world, yet he was an isolationist who wanted to keep American freedoms safe for Americans and no one else. Lindbergh was the quintessential family man, yet he fathered illegitimate children and suffered an unspeakable tragedy that became known as The Crime of the Century. Lindbergh embodied some of his era’s greatest virtues and harbored some of its worst prejudices.

Lindbergh was a 25 year old U.S. Air Mail pilot who was probably best known for two crashes before shooting to fame with his non-stop flight across the Atlantic from New York City to Paris on May 20-21, 1927. Lindbergh was Time Magazine’s first Man of the Year in 1927, and he used his newfound fame to promote the development of commercial flight and become a spokesman and symbol for advances in aviation.

Tragically, Lindbergh was the subject of front page headlines in 1932 when his infant son, Charles, Jr., was kidnapped and murdered in the Crime of the Century. After going into voluntary exile in Europe, Lindbergh found himself embroiled in scandals as he toured German (and Luftwaffe) aviation systems and took isolationist stances, at times making comments that were tinged with anti-Semitism and in favor of eugenics.

Nevertheless, after Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh was rejected from serving in the armed forces, likely because President Roosevelt thought he was a Nazi sympathizer. But Lindbergh worked his way through administrative and technical positions to give himself the opportunity to fly about 50 combat missions in the Pacific, impressing his colleagues with his flying abilities and technical know-how.

After World War II, as Lindbergh began to fade from the spotlight, he took up a number of causes, writing books and supporting environmental initiatives. The controversies began to fade as well, and when he died in 1974, he was remembered fondly for the Spirit of St. Louis and sympathetically for the Crime of the Century. Making History in the Sky chronicles the amazing life and career of Lindbergh, his greatest highs and most notorious lows, and everything inbetween. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events in his life, you will learn about Lucky Lindy like you never have before.

Amelia Earhart (1897- disappeared 1937)

The stars seemed near enough to touch and never before have I seen so many. I always believed the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, but I was sure of it that night. – Amelia Earhart

During the early 20th century, groundbreaking technology revolutionized transportation both on the ground and in the sky, with new motors making automobiles and airplanes a reality in the 1910s. Around that same time, the feminist movement was underway in the United States, spearheaded by women seeking the right to vote, lobbying for the temperance movement, and trying to make their voices heard.

It was at that crossroads that flight pioneer Amelia Earhart found herself in 1919, the very year President Wilson and Congress were trying to shepherd through the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote. That year, Earhart was given a ride on a plane piloted by legendary air racer Frank Hawks, and as she recalled, By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly.

Earhart’s unbridled joy for flying was only occasionally abated by a lack of finances, and a recurring sinus issue, but throughout the 1920s she was one of the few women licensed to fly, and she set an altitude record of 14,000 feet for women in 1922. In 1928, Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, but she was disappointed that she had to do so as a passenger, complaining, I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes.

Nevertheless, that trip made Lady Lindy the Queen of the Air in America, and Earhart was now the nation’s best known aviatrix. With her fresh face available for promoting everything from luggage to women’s clothing, Earhart was able to finance her own aviation and remain involved in promoting air travel and flying to skeptical Americans. In May 1932, Earhart finally made her solo flight across the Atlantic, for which she received the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French Government and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Herbert Hoover.

By the mid-1930s, Earhart had set a multitude of altitude and distance records, but she wanted to attempt a circumnavigation of the world. After an ill-fated first attempt, Earhart and Fred Noonan set off on another attempt, creating one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries. Earhart and Noonan were to land on Howland Island, 1700 miles southwest of Hawaii, but radio transmissions ceased between the plane and authorities on the ground the morning of July 2, 1937. Earhart and Noonan had disappeared, never to be seen again, despite one of the nation’s largest and costliest manhunts to date.

Unfortunately, the speculation over exactly what happened to Earhart and the mystery of her disappearance have come to overshadow and obscure her many accomplishments. Making History in the Air looks at the theories attempting to explain her disappearance, but it also humanizes the woman whose sheer love of flying propelled her to unprecedented heights among both the clouds and her countrymen. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events in her life, you will learn about Lady Lindy like you never have before, in no time at