Come fly the world : the jet-age story of the women of Pan Am
(Book)

Originally published: [New York] : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-256) and index.

Required to have a college education, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service office, 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 twenty-six years old at the time of hire. Cooke weaves together the real-life stories of these adventurous women, 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 Pan Am stewardesses' unseen 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 precious R&R and then flown back to war. Finally, with Operation Babylift - the dramatic evacuation of two thousand children during the fall of Saigon - the book's special cast of stewardesses unites in "a unique and compassion portrait of barrier breaking women in the 1960s and '70s" (Publishers Weekly).