Reviews for East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart

The average rating for East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-11-17 00:00:00 Trever Turner As others who have reviewed this book have noted, this is the definitive, best-researched book on Amelia Earhart's life that has been published to date. What's interesting to me is that all of the reviewers go on, after stating this fact, to give glowing reviews to Earhart's life, and translate that to the book itself. While Earhart's life and personality are fascinating, the style of this book is tedious, and reading it was drudgery interspersed with a few surprising tidbits. I only forced myself to finish the book because a)it was a gift; b)I've been interested in Amelia Earhart since childhood; and c) I thought I should finish it so I could give it a complete review. My two main complaints are style and context. It's clear that this book took 10 years to research. In fact, there are points in the book where the text reads like a list of facts that are strung together without anything connecting them. In other places, there are several instances where the author repeats the same descriptive phrase twice in the same paragraph. This happened several times in relation to new characters who were being introduced. This is unsettling as a reader because it makes the prose repetitive, and you wonder if the author thought you might not be paying attention, or if the author herself wasn't paying attention when she was writing. In addition, much of Butler's commentary is trite, and her style lacks consistency and the ability to engage the reader. In terms of context, the author went too far in creating the context of Amelia's life. The first 100 pages or so chronicle Amelia's first 20 years and the history of her ancestors, 3 generations back. Those 100 pages felt like 400, and it was a tough slog through this opening section. Lots of unnecessary detail, and a long list of characters detracted from the main objective of setting the context of Amelia's family and upbringing. Further on in the book, the author continues to deviate from her main point to include random facts and relationships. While some of this can be acceptable to help the reader better understand the era in which Earhart lived, it was largely distracting and the author often wandered for paragraphs or pages at a time. In short, Susan Butler did a very thorough job researching Amelia Earhart's life. I only wish that she had such a thorough editor who would've helped her condense her immense body of research into a clear, articulate and engaging biography.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-18 00:00:00 Brent Rohde East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart was a meticulously researched biography of the adventurer Amelia Earhart that was very enjoyable. Earhart's accomplishments were many, particularly when you realize how difficult it was for a woman in the 1920's and 1930's in aviation. Earhart was instrumental in paving the way for many although she always claimed that she had never left her field of social work.