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Julia Cooke

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Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am Kindle Edition

by Julia Cooke (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 1,690 ratings

Editors' pick Best History

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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 iconic Pan Am between 1966 and 1975 also had to be between 5′3" and 5′9", between 105 and 140 pounds, and under 26 years of age at the time of hire.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, as the airline added runs from Saigon to Hong Kong for planeloads of weary young soldiers straight from the battlefields, who were off for five days of R&R, and then flown back to war. Finally, with Operation Babylift—the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children during the fall of Saigon—the book’s special cast of stewardesses unites to play an extraordinary role on the world stage.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of March 2021: In the 1960s and 1970s, an adventurous heart and steady nerves—plus youth and a slender figure—were necessary for those who wanted to see the world as a Pan Am stewardess. With a colorful focus on the women who flew around the globe, Cooke explores R&R flights during the Vietnam War, decolonization in Africa, and glamorous parties in foreign bars. A cross-pollination of women’s rights and international events, Come Fly the World blooms with extraordinary moments and unforgettable women. —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review

Review

"After a year of severe restrictions on travel...[Julia Cooke's] book looking back at the height of the jet age offers more than one delicious flavor of escapism...a front-row view of history." --The Washington Post

"In the 1960s and 70s, Pan Am stewardesses changed a sexualized job requiring weigh-ins and retirement at 26 into a forum for serious work. They became ambassadors, transported traumatized soldiers, rescued Vietnamese children in Operation Babylift. A fascinating history of a bygone era." --People Magazine

"This engrossing account, which reads like a novel, offers a combination of riveting personal stories and little-known history, and will draw in readers from the first page. A must-read." --STARRED, Library Journal

"Come Fly the World is a pop passport to another time. Take a social history flight with the women of Pan Am." --Lily Koppel, New York Times bestselling author

"[This] limber, well-researched...account of Pan Am World Airways in its glory days is smoothly interwoven with the engagingly complex stories of several longtime flight attendants....An entertaining, insightful look into a gritty and glamorous era in air travel." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08B3CDMFQ
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books (March 2, 2021)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 2, 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 13534 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 293 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0358251400

Best Sellers Rank: #118,832 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #4 in Commercial Aviation (Kindle Store)
- #192 in History eBooks of Women
- #224 in Company Business Profiles (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.2 1,690 ratings

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Julia Cooke

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Julia Cooke's essays have been published in A Public Space, Salon, The Threepenny Review, Smithsonian, Tin House, and Virginia Quarterly Review, where she is a contributing editor. Her reporting has been published in Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times, Playboy, The Village Voice, The Atavist, Saveur, and more. She was a finalist for a 2014 Livingston Award in International Reporting for her profile of a young Cuban sex worker; her article about the blossoming of architecture and design in Havana won a 2016 New York Press Club Award. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Travel Writing 2014, Best Women's Travel Writing (Volume 9), One World, Many Cultures (10th edition), and noted in Best American Essays 2016 and Best American Travel Writing 2017.

She's written about the Portuguese seaside town that inspired Ian Fleming's James Bond and translating for a Guatemalan asylum-seeker, profiled the most prolific design writer in the U.S. and Mexico City's best-known contemporary artist, and considered why American TV watchers love female spies. Julia is the recipient of fellowships from The Norman Mailer Center, The Constance Saltonstall Foundation, and Columbia University. She holds an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and an MFA from Columbia University.

The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba is her first book.

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Suzann Stamps

Came for the parties, stayed for the history

Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2021

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As a young girl growing up in the 60’s and 70’s contemplating what were considered gender appropriate careers, jobs such as nursing, teaching, and secretarial work held no appeal for me. In my young mind, by far the most glamorous, exciting career choice was stewardess. Who wouldn’t want to be jetting off to exotic cities while wearing a snappy designer uniform? Come Fly The World certainly touches on the glamorous side of the job, the all night parties, the shopping, and the independence allowed these women in a paternalistic era. I picked up this book for the parties but found it to be much more than a frivolous read. Author, Julia Cooke, weaves together the stories of several Pan Am stewardesses of the era to tell a fascinating, well researched story . These women were not just pretty, trim, and pleasant. They were required to be bi-lingual and many held bachelor and advanced degrees. Shut out of other jobs due to the inequality of the times, they found kindred spirits in the other stewardesses of Pan Am looking for adventure and independence. The book parallels the role of stewardess with the plight of women in the 60’s and 70’s. The women of Pan Am founded trade unions and women’s rights groups. They went to court to fight the sexist rules governing their profession. African American women broke racial barriers by becoming stewardesses. Many women volunteered for dangerous flights shuttling soldiers to and from Saigon and flying orphans out of wartorn Vietnam. I still think being a Pan Am stewardess in the 60’s would have been an exciting career, and I will now regard these women with much more respect and appreciation for breaking some glass ceilings as they flew.

5 people found this helpful

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CK M

Substantive Stewardesses

Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2023

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This read strikes a great balance of cultural, political, and commercial evolutions in post WW II America. Having taken advantage of the opportunity of world-wide travel as a flight attendant in the early 70s, I am struck by how well this book tells my own story - from flirtatious to feminist, an educated wanderer awed by the Parthenon and Hong Kong street vendors between stints serving miniature meals to planeloads of passengers. The breadth of research and depth of talent in Cooke's pages identify her as the right person to tell all of our stories and shine a light on the substance of the women of the skies. Bravo!

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SaraB

Could Not Put This Down!

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2021

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I am all kinds of obsessed with this book! I haven’t swallowed a book whole like that in a long time. I cannot get enough of these fascinating stories of women in the 1960s flying around the world, going to places so far flung and out of the norm for women of that era. If you like your wanderlust with a sense of breaking tradition and not subscribing the the societal norms that America lays out for women, this is the book for you. It follows a multitude of stewardesses throughout their time working for Pan Am and is soaked through with the history of the jet-set era: Cold War, Vietnam, Civil Rights, plus it’s interlaced with wild stories of the adventures these women got to have in places like Hong Kong, Accra, Guam, India, -- basically the whole world. Cooke also showed how stewardesses were at the forefront of the feminist movement as they demanded things like not having to resign when they got married, being allowed to work past the age of 30, being able to enter managerial positions within the airline, and not being laid off for weight gain.

If you’re expecting a tight narrative focus on just a one or two women, it’s not really that because it jumps around a bit to paint a broad but detailed picture you won’t want to stop looking at. My favorite chapters focused on Hazel (one of the few Black stewardesses) and her growing love for Moscow during her layovers there during the Cold War—trips to the Bolshoi, standing in line with Russian women for lipstick, Hazel discovering that Pushkin was of African descent, it’s all here and it’s amazing.

The breathless refugee flights toward the end of the book in and out of Saigon before it fell had me spellbound and Cooke did an amazing job showing these women at work (literally dodging bullets while pulling people running on the tarmac up an onto a taxiing plane) while handling the wrongness of the Vietnam War.

At its heart is a celebration of travelers, not vacationers. Those who “take a genuine interest in people, in other cultures, in thinking outside their own circumstances.” I love this like in Cooke’s acknowledgements and it sums out how I felt after reading her novel, especially as someone who has directly benefited from the efforts of women in tourism and hospitality before me: “The space that stewardesses in habited and the comfort they earned in motion allowed me, today, to take my own satisfaction from travel, and for that I am grateful.”

14 people found this helpful

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Zelda the Cat

Don't Forget Your Stockings!

Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2021

Verified Purchase

Thank you to NetGalley and Julia Cooke for a free copy to provide an unbiased review

I am pretty feminist. I am fairly opinionated. I am fairly lucky that I live in the time period in which I lived because if I worked in this industry I would be fired before I was even on board my first flight. This book was extremely eye opening in the treatment of early stewardesses and women in general.

I was originally drawn to this novel because of the cover and the retro feel. But it quickly turned into a narrative on the time period, the impact of air travel on modern culture, and the insane treatment of women and unrealistic expectations placed on them. As a history teacher there were a lot of nuggets that I did not know - PanAm's role in Vietnam for instance.

While I enjoyed and found this fascinating, I also found it a bit all over the place and tedious in some points. It was not a quick read (not that I rated it based on that fact) but chocked full of data and anecdotes that give you a true understanding of the industry.

22 people found this helpful

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Piper Winifred

wonderful cultural history

Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2023

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I loved this book! It was great to read about the stewardesses of Pan Am, but it was about so much more. Julia Cooke wraps her account in a fantastic review of cultural history from the late 1950s to 1970ish. Significant events, political attitudes, women’s ideas, and how the stewardesses interacted with it all creates a book well worth reading. I espoused loved reading about the Baby Lift out of Vietnam right before Saigon fell.

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