Recent attention paid to pioneer women pilots, long overdue, has produced both individual and collective biographies; this salute to their enterprising spirits flies above the rest. The opening line, “Harriet Quimby started something,” sets the tone as lively, readable text profiles nine women: Quimby, Katherine Stinson, Ruth Law, Bessie Coleman, Amelia Earhart, Ruth Nichols, Louise Thaden, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Jacqueline Cochran. A chapter for each details their achievements, the obstacles they overcame and how they lived their lives at full throttle; especially useful is a blocked Timeline for each. Archival photographs, both black-and-white and colorized, put a face on these women, enhancing an attractive format—quality paper, clean type, generous white space. Related in chronological order, their stories provide documentation of their contributions, create a context and continuum and delineate the determination of women aviators who proved the skies were open to women, where they made definitive differences in history. (sources, bibliography, websites, index) (Biography. 9-14)
