"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."

I was really excited to read Come Fly The World. Though I do remember Pan Am, this was all way before my time. I found the stories really interesting and they're all based on real- life stories. Which makes it all the more interesting! Oh to fly like that again! They made it into such an experience. Such a big difference from now.

Thank you Netgalley for the digital copy of Come Fly The World in exchange for my review.

This book was living history for me. As a 68 year old these events happened in my lifetime and provided a new look through the flight attendants.
While I was not expecting as much history in this book, it really added to the time and experience of these flight attendants.
Julia Cooke takes the reader through the lives of attendants, Karen and Lynne as well as stories of others. She presents the history of stewardesses thru flight attendants in a well written and concise adventure. Highly recommend this book.

Fascinating! I learned a lot about female flight attendants and the history of PanAm - what a strong, courageous, interesting position this was! I had no idea about their involvement in transporting soldiers in Vietnam nor had I ever considered the patriarchy that determined every aspect of these women’s careers.

The writing fell a bit flat to me at times which is a bummer because the personal stories and locations were thrilling.

Thanks so much to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for this advanced copy. I’m grateful.

A niche history looking at the role of Pan Am and their stewardesses with a particular amount of attention on the role they played during the Vietnam War. I was much more interested in the stories of the girls themselves and would have liked more of them (what specifics of training was like, for example), but I recognize the importance of explaining the business side of things as well as the politics of the time in order to fully give context to the work they were doing.

In Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am, Julia Cooke portrays adventure-seeking women who “sought refuge serving on planes that would take them around the world until the public position of women back home shifted enough to accommodate their ambition.” One former stewardess Cooke interviewed, Lynn, watched the war in Vietnam escalate and decided to study the history of the region about which she knew so little. She began to feel “a growing certainty that the world was enormous and that she wanted to be out there, be in it.” She saw an advertisement recruiting airline stewardesses expressing just what she was asking herself: “How can you change a world you’ve never seen?”

Complete review is forthcoming in the Women's Review of Books.

I liked this book and the stories of the women who were the first flight attendants for Pan Am. You hear about their training, the camaraderie among the women, and the exotic places they get to visit. It is so much different than air travel now! The women's stories are intermixed with what was going on in the US, from wars to social changes. I wanted to like this book more, but I got tired of the repetition, especially the section about Vietnam. I also wish there were pictures or diagrams. It would have added so much more to the book. There was also a snobbery and arrogance that Pan Am was so superior to the other airlines. You can see how this arrogance played out and eventually led to its downfall.

The requires for embarking as a stewardess on The Pan Am Airlines was just insane.
"Required to have a college degree, 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."
This only reminds me how picky the companies were and how much they disrespected the women all around the world, trying to fit into a role model and achieving to be perfect just to work for a good company
My reason for choosing this book was that I wanted to become a stewardess a long time ago and I had so much appreciation for those who were doing this job
Altogether, this was a fantastic and and informative read about the Airways
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ebook edition of this book

"Required to have a college degree, 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."

The requirements to be a Pan Am stewardess were just insane! Cooke does a wonderful job of pulling you into the time period. The lives of women throughout history have always interested me and this was no different. With the glamour of international travel, freedom, and your own money, I can see the appeal this would hold for the women of that time period. Heck, it sounds pretty good today as well! A nice look back and it's nice to see how far we have come.

3.5 stars ~

I was drawn to this for a number of reasons, but the main one being that my late great-aunt worked for Pan Am and it seemed magical. While most of this book is fascinating and educational, it does have a few lulls. But wow, does it reveal the patriarchy for what it is, while providing a plethora of information and stories about Pan American World Airways.

Very much worth the read if you're at all interested in airlines, how women navigated a new world, or like travel memoirs(ish).

This was such a fascinating and informative book on the history of Pan Am and the stewardesses who flew for them. It also contains a lot of history of the Vietnam war.

I thought at first that it was going to be a fluffy read about being a stewardess but it was the complete opposite. The woman that are featured in this book are smart and feisty and educated. They are not at all what society stereotypes stewardesses as.

This book was a total must read for all the history this book packs. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this book in exchange for an honest review.

We follow the flying lives of four girls who wanted to have it all and fly the skies to exotic locations. I enjoyed reading about their role in flying Vietnam soldiers back home. Also enjoyed the writing style and details about their training and jobs at this time

Th]is book would be excellent for discussion. It made me think about how far women have come in the past 40+ years and about how many things are the same. I enjoyed reading about the lives of a select few Pan Am stewardesses. They were not the "eye candy" that advertisers presented. These were college educated, multilingual women who took advantage of one of the few career opportunities for women that offered travel and adventure. The book does a good job of showing the evolution of women's roles in the field - the increasing opportunities to rise in the ranks. It also showed the bravery and independence of the women; they flew into war zones. There is a lot here to think about and to discuss.

Come Fly the World was a fascinating read. How airline stewardesses evolve along with how society changed through the decades was very interesting. Their role during the Vietnam War years was especially poignant to read.

3.5 When I was a young girl, my friend had an older sister who was a stewardess. She kept a room in her family home that she returned to sporadically. I remember loving her outfit and all the stories she told us about her travels. That was it! When I grew up I wanted to fly. Life of course, had other plans.

We follow the flying lives of four girls who wanted the same. As did many others, but standards were high and one needed to meet certain height, weight, age and language requirements. Still many applied, wanting a life that included excitement and travel. Their lives though we're not all glamour though and sometimes outright dangerous. Pan Am for years had a contract with the government to fly and return young soldiers to and from Vietnam. African countries were the of danger because of constant could and in Moscow, at the height of the cold war, the women were often followed by spies for the government.

There is also the changing faces, and rising needs of women. They wanted more than the airlines wanted to give. Not having to leave when one married, promotions that only men received, being able to return after having a child and a change of image. This book actually covered quite a bit.

Never realized as my mom always worked how narrow women's roles were defined in the sixties. I'm glad I wasn't adulting at that time.

I thought this book was very well written. I always enjoy a good non-fiction book, and this author did a wonderful job blending the history and perspective of the stewardesses' time with the airlines, and the historical context of the world in which they flew. I learned quite a bit not just about the jet-age, but also the Vietnam War. I had no idea how many civilians were involved in the Vietnam War from the American side. Of particular interest to me was the third part of this book. I thought that was where the author's research and narrative non-fiction abilities really shone. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys history, flight, and a unique perspective.

So I made the huge mistake of not realizing this was a non-fiction story when I picked it up.
It is well written and very interesting, but for sure not what I expected.
I opened this book planning to delve into a historical fiction story about Pan Am flight attendants. You can imaging my surprise when it was not that type of story at all.
So the low rating is really my own fault. I just am never going to be a very big non-fiction reader.

I have always dreamed of being a flight attendant as I grew up poor and always wanted to travel the world. I thought I knew quite a bit about the history of flight attendants, but this book opened my mind to so much more of the history. I was immediately drawn in by the cover and title.

The book loosely followed three women and their experiences working as a stewardess and then weaves in details of the world of aircrafts and the history of the Pan Am airline.

I highly recommend this book to anyone that has ever been interested in working for an airline.

Come Fly the World is a fascinating true account of the heyday of commercial airlines, particularly focused on Pan American Airlines. The narrative centers around three stewardesses, as they were then called, from their debut on the aircraft of Pan Am in the sixties through to the present day in the epilogue. The women were participants in major world events: the civil rights movement of the '60s and '70s, student riots, the war in Vietnam, the women's movement of the '70s and '80s, as well as civil wars in several small countries which they flew into and out of frequently. They suffered discrimination as they sought to advance through management at Pan Am and were fired upon as they helped airlift orphans and other Vietnamese civilians out of Vietnam just before the fall of Saigon to the Viet Cong. The book recounts the events, excitement, and danger that these worldly, intrepid women experienced as they flew Pan Am's routes throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia during those decades. Julia Cooke brings to life the turbulence and foments of the times around the globe in this nonfiction account that sometimes reads like a political thriller. The relationships among the members of the Pan Am "family" that endure to this day also stand out in this era of frequent job change and diminishing loyalty between employees and employers. This absorbing account of the lives of Tori, Lynne, and Karen as they traveled the world and took part in history will captivate readers.

Come Fly the World was such an interesting read to learn about Pan Am and in-flight service in the 1960s and 70s. Weaved within the pages, were the real stories of some stewardesses, which was really cool to read. There was so much that I didn’t know about these women and their jobs. For example, I had no idea that one of the requirements for the job was you had to be college educated. I assumed it was mostly 18 years trying to get out of their small towns. I thought this book was highly educational. I think you would enjoy this book whether you lived during this time or not.

As a kid, I always thought a flight attendant, or stewardess at the time, would be the most glamourous job. This book was a good depiction of that era and reading it brought back found childhood memories.