Amelia Earhart's Shoes: Is the Mystery Solved? FROM THE PUBLISHER
This updated edition includes recent, tantalizing archaeological evidence of castaways on a deserted Pacific island and post-crash radio messages purportedly from Amelia.
SYNOPSIS
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, here reports, in a bouncy, breezy style, the results of its 15-year intensive search for the location of Amelia Earhart and her plane, both lost in 1937. The four authors are scientists: an archaeologist, a geophysicist, a forensic anthropologist, and an engineer specializing in remote sensing technology. They combined their expertise to pinpoint the spot where they believe Earhart crashed and tell the elaborate story of what they believe happened to her remains.
Annotation © Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
"Whatever happened to Amelia Earhart?" has been an enduring question since she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared somewhere in the Pacific on July 2, 1937. Since then, the mystery has been "solved" by people who claim, among other things, that she was flying as a U.S. agent against the Japanese, that she died in a prisoner-of-war camp and that she was abducted by aliens. This book posits that due to bad weather, Earhart and Noonan missed their refueling stop on Howland Island in the mid-Pacific and landed on Nikumaroro, a small island south of their target. While most Earhart quests are based on imaginative, usually untested hypotheses, this volume is scrupulous in not making any unevidenced assertions. Working from a wide range of fields its authors are an archeological consultant, a geophysicist, a forensic anthropologist and an army engineer this book claims that human bones and a shoe found on Nikumaroro indicate that Earhart possibly landed and died there. Unlike other Earhart detectives, the authors repeatedly emphasize that their conclusions are tentative and conjectural. While their judgments are tantalizing and plausible, the fun of the book is being in on the excitement of the discoveries and the scientific testing of the hypothesis. Written in a colloquial, good-humored style that takes itself seriously but is not above cracking a joke to make a point, this is a must for "what happened to Amelia" fanatics, and also those who are interested in how science can be used to test the veracity of theories about historical mysteries. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
One of the enduring mysteries of the 20th century is the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan in 1937 during their 'round-the-world flight. The International Group for Historic Aviation Recovery (TIGHAR), an organization of aviation archaeologists, has been on the trail of the plane and its passengers for nearly two decades. Here it makes a compelling case that they have found the fateful scene of the crash-landing on the uninhabited tropical island of Nikumaroro. Search parties have been to Nikumaroro five times to examine the reefs and nearby areas systematically and have found a piece of aluminum aircraft skin and a shoe that are consistent with the lost flight and its famous crew. There are competing theories about Earhart's disappearance, but in this engrossing description of the investigations, TIGHAR has produced one of the most cogent and plausible theories yet. This is a valuable and entertaining primer on the disappearance itself, and it just might hold the solution to one of aviation's greatest mysteries. Mel D. Lane, Sacramento, CA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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