Come Fly the World: The Women of Pan Am at War and Peace

In the Jet Age, Pan Am offered young women the world, and Come Fly the World tells the story of the stewardesses who served on the iconic airline between 1966 and 1975. It explores the glamour, danger, and liberation of a jet-set life, and how the sexualized coffee-tea-or-me stereotype was at odds with the importance of their work.

Format: Hardback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 08 April 2021
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd

Travel writer Julia Cooke's exhilarating portrait of Pan Am stewardesses in the Mad Men era.

Glamour, danger, liberation: in the Jet Age, Pan Am offered young women the world.

Come Fly the World tells the story of the stewardesses who served on the iconic Pan American Airways between 1966 and 1975 - and of the unseen diplomatic role they played on the world stage.

Alongside the glamour was real danger, as they flew soldiers to and from Vietnam and staffed Operation Babylift - the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children during the fall of Saigon.

Cooke's storytelling weaves together the true stories of women like Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few African American stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of a jet-set life.

In the process, Cooke shows how the sexualized coffee-tea-or-me stereotype was at odds with the importance of what they did, and with the freedom, power, and sisterhood they achieved.

Weight: 414g
Dimension: 144 x 223 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781785786884