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Amelia Earhart’s Husband George Putnam ‘Pushed Her to the Brink’ New Book Claims
NEED TO KNOW
- A new biography on Amelia Earhart examines her sometimes tumultuous relationship with her husband, George Putnam
- An acclaimed publisher at the time, Putnam helped Earhart write her first book — and fell in “love at first sight” with her potential for success, the author claimed
- The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon is available July 15
A new book claims Amelia Earhart’s marriage contained a fair amount of turbulence.
The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon by Laurie Gwen Shapiro offers an account of the famous pilot’s marriage to George Putnam, referred to by his contemporaries as “the P.T. Barnum of publishing.” Earhart and Putnam had both a romantic and mutually beneficial professional relationship in the six years leading up to her death.
Shapiro’s new Earhart biography, which hit shelves on Tuesday, July 15, draws on a selection of new firsthand sources, including never-before-heard audio interviews.
Marrying a publisher had its benefits, Shapiro claimed, but Putnam “often pushed his authors to extreme lengths in the name of publicity, and no one bore that weight more than Amelia,” the book’s synopsis read.
“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,” the synopsis added.
According to Shapiro, Putnam experienced “love at first sight” — or rather, a lust for Earhart’s ability to usher in commercial success for him as a publisher, per a story in the Daily Mail.
The pair met in 1929 when Putnam interviewed and selected Earhart to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean as a passenger, the outlet reported. At the time, Putnam was still married to his first wife. Together, Putnam and Earhart collaborated on the pilot’s first book and eventually wed in 1931.
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The new biography aims to humanize and ground aspects of the major historical figure, the synopsis added, by shedding light onto Earhart’s personal life, aspirations, struggles and partnership with Putnam.
The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon is available now, wherever books are sold.
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