Beyond Fiction Book Club - Come Fly the World by Julia Cooke

Join us to discuss this month's Beyond Fiction Book Club selection, Come Fly The World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am by Julia Cooke.  Books will be available to check out at the Adult Help Desk.  If you need help acquiring a book, please reach out to Jill Morino at jmorino@wauclib.org.  

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Glamour, danger, liberation: in a Mad Men–era of commercial flight, Pan Am World Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out, and wanted up

Required to have a college education, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service officer, a jet-age stewardess serving on Pan Am between 1966 and 1975 also had to meet strict height, weight and age requirements.

Cooke’s intimate storytelling weaves together the real-life stories of a memorable cast of characters, from small-town girl Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few Black stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of their new jet-set life. Cooke brings to light the story of Pan Am stewardesses’ role in the Vietnam War, including the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children during the fall of Saigon.