The Aviator and the Showman
Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 • An NPR Book We Love 2025 • A History Best Book of 2025 • A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2025 • A New York Post Best Book of 2025 • A New York Times Editors' Choice • CBS Sunday Morning Summer Book Report Pick • New York Times “Books to Read in July” • A Town and Country Best Book of July • An Amazon Best Book of July • A Barnes & Noble Best Book of July • A LitHub Best Reviewed Nonfiction in July • A BookBub Beach Read Pick • A New Yorker Best Book We Read This Week • A 2026 Kansas Notable Book Award Winner • Southern CALIBA and MIBA Regional Bestseller
“Laurie Gwen Shapiro has dug deep into the archives, and emerged with an exhilarating tale of the adventurous life of Amelia Earhart and the remarkable relationship that helped to forge her legend. Yet Shapiro goes even further—stripping away the myths and revealing something far more profound and intricate and true. The Aviator and the Showman is one terrific book.”
—David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon
The riveting and cinematic story of a partnership that would change the world forever
In 1928, a young social worker and hobby pilot named Amelia Earhart arrived in the office of George Putnam, heir to the Putnam & Sons throne and hitmaker, on the hunt for the right woman for a secret flying mission across the Atlantic. A partnership—professional and soon otherwise—was born.
The Aviator and the Showman unveils the untold story of Amelia's decade-long marriage to George Putnam, offering an intimate exploration of their relationship and the pivotal role it played in her enduring legacy. Despite her outwardly modest and humble image, Amelia was fiercely driven and impossibly brave, a lifelong feminist and trailblazer in her personal and professional life. Putnam, the so-called “PT Barnum of publishing” was a bookselling visionary—but often pushed his authors to extreme lengths in the name of publicity, and no one bore that weight more than Amelia. Their ahead-of-its time partnership supported her grand ambitions—but also pressed her into more and more treacherous stunts to promote her books, influencing a certain recklessness up to and including her final flight.
Earhart is a captivating figure to many, but the truth about her life is often overshadowed by myth and legend. In this cinematic new account, Laurie Gwen Shapiro emphasizes Earhart’s multifaceted human side, her struggles, and her authentic aspirations, the truths behind her brave pursuits and the compromises she made to fit into societal expectations. Drawing from a trove of new sources including undiscovered audio interviews, The Aviator and the Showman is a gripping and passionate tale of adventure, colorful characters, hubris, and a complex and a vivid portrait of a marriage that shaped the trajectory of an iconic life.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This biography offers a fresh, potentially shocking new look at aviation icon Amelia Earhart…and the husband who may have been responsible for her death. Journalist Laurie Gwen Shapiro pulls back the curtain on Earhart’s relationship with charismatic publishing mogul George Putnam, whose ideas helped lead her to fame—and may have also pressured her to take increasingly unwise risks. Shapiro strikes a smart balance here, framing Earhart’s famous story as not just being about her immense courage but also about a wildly successful PR campaign engineered by her smooth-talking husband. We were struck by how much nuance Shapiro achieves by avoiding the typical rose-tinted view of the famous pilot, showing us Earhart’s naivete and hubris as well as her wide-eyed aspiration and bravery. If you’re someone who revels in discovering the flip side of a heroic tale, The Aviator and the Showman will deliver.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The tragic death of Amelia Earhart owed as much to her husband's Svengali-like machinations as to her limited piloting skills, according to this canny dual biography. Journalist Shapiro (The Stowaway) recaps the lives of Earhart and George Putnam, the latter a New York City publishing executive who, in 1928, recruited Earhart, a Boston social worker and part-time pilot, to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean (as a passenger) with the goal of ghostwriting her memoirs. He then became her business manager, lining up speaking tours and sponsorships (and blackballing other women fliers). Smitten by her "steely gray-blue eyes," he eventually persuaded Earhart to marry him. The Great Depression made the couple dependent on her earning power, which necessitated further aviation stunts like her 1932 success in making the first solo trans-Atlantic flight by a woman. Unfortunately, financial need also motivated her fatal 1937 attempt, strenuously promoted by Putnam, to fly around the world, which tested her talents beyond their limit. She and her navigator ran out of fuel (and plunged to their deaths) while trying to find Howland Island mainly because Earhart's inept handling of her plane's radio prevented her from getting a directional bearing, according to Shapiro. The author's appealingly flawed Earhart is high-minded and courageous but also overconfident and careless; Putnam, meanwhile, is a narcissistic and manipulative con man who once staged his own kidnapping for publicity. This nuanced reprisal of Earhart's life certainly tarnishes her reputation, but thereby makes her saga all the more captivating.
