Whatever Became of Amelia Earhart?

The great aviation mystery of the 20th century was the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. The most famous aviatrix of her day, Amelia Earhart disappeared attempting to circumnavigate the globe by air - she would have been the first woman to do so. The tragedy spawned numerous conspiracy theories about the cause of her disappearance and her ultimate fate.

Lost: Amelia Earhart's Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life, by Rachel Hartigan, examines her life, what happened to her on her fatal flight, and looks at the numerous explanations for her disappearance.

The book follows two tracks. One follows a search for her fate: what really happened to her. The other offers a new Amelia Earhart biography. Hartigan presents them in alternating chapters. Odd chapters follow the search for Earhart, even chapters her biography.

The biography traces Earhart’s life. They reveal her unstable childhood. They show her early life as an adult, with an interest in both flying and social work (including life in a settlement house as a social worker). Hartigan shows Earhart’s introduction to aviation pioneering, chosen to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic.

Then a canny publicist (who eventually married her) let her grow into a real aviation pioneer, shepherding her career from first to first. The flights generally broke even. The money came from the lecture circuit. Bigger firsts were needed, leading to the round-the-world attempt. She disappeared on the longest, most difficult leg.

The other chapters follow attempts to discover what happened on that flight. It seemed inexplicable at the time. An intense search followed, finding nothing. Eventually, wild conspiracy theories emerged, pursued by fame-seekers or those obsessed by the story. Some (that the Japanese found and executed Earhart and her navigator, Frank Noonan, or that Earhart arranged the disappearance and survived under a different name) fall apart under scrutiny. That never swayed the advocates. They chose to believe their theory, not reality.

Hartigan is part of the story, participating in 21st-century National Geographic expeditions to determine Earhart’s fate. They searched Nikumaroro Island for remains of her airplane or its crew. Earhart landing near there is one of two plausible explanations for her end. (The other, that she crashed into the ocean, along with expeditions searching there, is discussed.)

Lost yields no firm answers. Yet it is a fascinating look at an aviation pioneer and of the obsessive attempts to determine her fate. Anyone interested in mid-20th-century aviation will find it interesting.

“Lost: Amelia Earhart's Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life,” by Rachel Hartigan, National Geographic, March 2026, 320 pages, $28.00 (Hardcover), $13.99 (E-book), $19.95 (Audiobook)

This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.