With faltering family finances, she soon sold the plane. On her twenty-fifth birthday, Earhart purchased a Kinner Airster biplane. She flew it, in 1922, when she set the women’s altitude record of 14,000 feet. With her first plane ride in 1920, she realized her true passion and began flying lessons with female aviator Neta Snook. During World War I, she left college to work at a Canadian military hospital, where she met aviators and became intrigued with flying.Īfter the war, Earhart completed a semester at Columbia University, then the University of Southern California. The family moved from Kansas to Iowa to Minnesota to Illinois, where Earhart graduated from high school. Written at the height of the golden age of aviation, this book captures the spirit and enthusiasm of an incredible period of history.She never reached her fortieth birthday, but in her brief life, Amelia Earhart became a record-breaking female aviator whose international fame improved public acceptance of aviation and paved the way for other women in commercial flight.Īmelia Mary Earhart was born on Jin Atchison, Kansas to Amy Otis Earhart and Edwin Stanton Earhart, followed in 1899 by her sister Muriel. In addition to her top-notch writing, Earhart included several facsimiles of the original pages of her flight log and a great many photographs from this historic flight.

Earhart ends her book with a discussion of women, aviation, its history, its future and its problems contemporary to the time in which she wrote. Using expanded entries from her flight logbook (written in pencil and in the dark) Earhart relates the story of how she came to be connected with the flight of the Friendship and what she wanted to accomplish by it.

She would eventually make the flight by herself, in 1935, but it is the flight described in 20 hrs, 40 min that launched her incredibly celebrity. Their landing in France propelled Earhart to international fame. She was not flying, but served as navigator to pilot William Stultz. One year after Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic, Earhart made the journey described in this book. From a fascination with flying to her first lesson to her mastery of the mechanics of aviation, Earhart emerges as a pioneer and a character deserving of her tremendous fame and admiration. Dropping out of high school to help with the war effort (World War I) she found herself in Canada working as a nurse, riveted by stories of pilots flying over Europe. In simple, candid prose, Earhart recounts the events in her life that led to her interest in flying. The legend of Amelia Earhart has grown so large that this book, her account of her first flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1928, is a refreshing glimpse into her remarkable spirit of adventure.

20 Hours, 40 Min by Amelia Earhart