The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon

by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

While the persistent mystery of Amelia Earhart's death may remain unsolved, her inspiring life and accompanying partnership with George Putnam is a treat. Shapiro's account brings new light to the life these two shared.

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 BookBub Beach Read Pick

“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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593295908
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/15/2025
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Laurie Gwen Shapiro is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist whose writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York, The Daily Beast, Slate, and others. Shapiro is the 2021 winner of the Damn History Article Award for her New Yorker piece “The Improbable Journey of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes” and a gold medallion winner in the People Profiles category for the Silurians Press Club’s seventy-seventh annual Excellence in Journalism Awards. She is the author of The Stowaway, a bestseller and an Indie Next selection. She is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute in the graduate program.

Editorial Reviews

The Aviator and the Showman is a lavish, layered narrative, a primer on early aviation and the transition of publishing from genteel carriage trade to an industry increasingly reliant on blockbusters…[the book] reveals the magnitude of our celebrity worship, the wonder of what we don’t understand. Shapiro captures the thrill of a leap into the unknown, recalling the works of Jon Krakauer and Sebastian Junger.”
—Hamilton Cain, LA Times

“The book isn’t a dry biography or a rote retelling of history. It’s a narrative in full, one alive with character and tension. A story with stakes... That is what Shapiro has so masterfully done in this book.”
—Molly Cotner, Pueblo Star Journal

“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

“This profoundly researched, gripping journey is a must read. Filled with stunning details of the courageous life of feminist adventurer, politically radical, and generous social worker Amelia Earhart, as well as her self-serving promoter husband, and their networks of friends and allies, The Aviator and the Showman is captivating and heartening.”
—Blanche Wiesen Cook, New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 1-3

“I thought I understood the story of Amelia Earhart. I could not have been more wrong. As Shapiro proves in this irresistible book, the full tale is so much more thrilling, inspiring, and outrageous than even the most ardent fan might imagine. Read it. It is a wild ride!”
—Candice Millard, New York Times bestselling author of River of the Gods

“Laurie Gwen Shapiro doesn’t give us a love story; she gives us something better—a compelling inside look at a complicated marriage that fundamentally changed the 20th century. In these pages, Amelia Earhart lives again.”
—Keith O'Brien, New York Times bestselling author of Fly Girls and Charlie Hustle

We need myths… and there comes a time when we need to unpack them. This revelatory book—in effect a double biography, vivid, cinematic, exuberantly fond of its subjects yet intent on excavating truth from layers of mythmaking—reveals the machinations behind Putnam’s push to make Earhart an aviation star, and her willingness to assume that role.
—Russell Shorto, author of Taking Manhattan and The Island at the Center of the World

“[Shapiro’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 . . . makes her saga all the more captivating.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“The Aviator and the Showman tells a captivating tale shaped by the forces of ambition and love.”
—Bookpage (starred review)

“In this gossipy dual biography of aviator Amelia Earhart and her husband, publisher George Putnam, Shapiro sets out to right what she purports has been a biographical history of errors “about every single aspect” of Earhart’s life and death. Drawing on archived records, diaries, and interviews with the couple and those who knew them, Shapiro crafts a narrative that is often surprisingly intimate about their thoughts and feelings.”
—Booklist

“Journalist Shapiro, unsatisfied with “whitewashed” biographies of Amelia Earhart, offers an evenhanded portrait of the iconic aviator, focusing on her relationship with publishing tycoon George P. Putnam…Capturing the tension and peril of early flying, Shapiro conveys, as well, Earhart’s unflagging ambition and courage. [The Aviator and the Showman is] a sympathetic, well-researched biography.”
–Kirkus

“Among the many biographies of Earhart, Shapiro’s stands out with its melding of the aviator’s story with that of her less famous husband. Fans of aviation history will find this an engaging read.”
—Library Journal

From the Publisher

2025-04-16
A groundbreaking aviator.

Journalist Shapiro, unsatisfied with “whitewashed” biographies of Amelia Earhart, offers an evenhanded portrait of the iconic aviator, focusing on her relationship with publishing tycoon George P. Putnam. In 1921, Earhart was living in Los Angeles when she took her first flight and felt “unexpectedly” drawn to flying; lessons led to performances in air rodeos and some local acclaim. In 1927, while teaching English in a Boston settlement house, she was also working at a fledging airfield, when she came to Putnam’s attention. A wheeler-dealer known as the publishing world’s P.T. Barnum, he was looking for a woman to sign on as a passenger for a transatlantic flight. Immediately, he felt smitten with the charming young Earhart; she was drawn to the adventure. To her surprise, the flight made her a star. “Wherever Amelia went,” Shapiro writes, “she ignited a frenzy of excitement that not only thrilled audiences but also allowed George to revel in her reflected glory.” She took tea with George Bernard Shaw, sat in a box at Wimbledon, dined with Lady Astor, and was showered with ticker tape in parades in New York and Boston. Putnam became her wily manager, tireless publicist, and, in 1931, after repeated proposals, her husband. He profited financially, to be sure, from her feats: the longest nonstop flight by a woman and the fastest crossing of the Atlantic; the first woman to fly solo nonstop from coast to coast, setting a woman’s speed record; the first person to fly solo across the Pacific. In 1937, she embarked on her most challenging—and final—flight: around the world. Capturing the tension and peril of early flying, Shapiro conveys, as well, Earhart’s unflagging ambition and courage.

A sympathetic, well-researched biography.

Kirkus Reviews