Fasten your seatbelts for a first class flight through history with the expanded, updated Come Fly With Us! Tenth Anniversary Edition!
In the 1930s, the first stewardesses were registered nurses whose duties included fixing loose chairs, discussing meteorology and sights, swatting flies, and carrying a railroad timetable for stranded passengers. By the 1940s, stewardesses were released to the war effort, and by the 1950s, they were viewed as wives-in-training, as adept at mixing a baby's bottle as mixing a Martini. The Swinging Sixties and early Seventies saw female flight attendants used as marketing tools to lure male business passengers aloft. Some were dressed in micro-minis, go-go boots and buttons that read "Pure, Sober, Available"; others did an airborne striptease.
"Come Fly With Us! traces the evolution of the profession from in-flight caregiver to airborne bombshell to highly trained lifesavers."
--New York Daily News
"Come Fly With Us! chronicles the alluring history of the stewardess...recalling a long-gone glamorous era when women travelled in pumps..."
--Newsweek
"Come Fly With Us! is a loving romp through decades of flight attendant history... The wonderfully illustrated book...underscores the dramatic changes in the industry."
--Associated Press
"...Come Fly With Us! exhumes a long-forgotten era of glorious airplane travel and pays tribute to an underappreciated part of our heritage."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review
"...press shots of chirpy flight attendants are fascinating, not only for the fashions in which they were uniformed, but also as evidence of what could be gotten away with. For all its glamour, Come Fly With Us! remembers to touch on the serious..."
Air & Space Smithsonian magazine
"A perfect history lesson!"
Elle magazine (Holland)
"It is a story that comes with a strong dash of romance."
--The Independent (England
"The book documents an era when...the airlines were competing to lure male business travelers.."
-NPR
Johanna Omelia has served as Editor-in-Chief of various New York City based art and beauty magazines. She is the author and photographer of
Summer in Santa Fe: Garden Fresh Menus from The City Different, a regional culture and cuisine book. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Michael Waldock has managed companies in the United States and Europe and served on the boards of cosmetics and natural products companies, visiting more than 150 countries in the process. He has travelled on most of the world's airlines, which led to his interest in commercial aviation. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
