In Praise of Amelia Earhart’s Adventurous Spirit

In the early 20th century, when the idea of a female pilot was widely considered an unladylike flight of fancy, Amelia Earhart refused to be held back on the basis of her gender. When Earhart was young, and rebelling against the expectations of her traditionally Victorian mother, she kept a scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings of other independent, successful women: a telling testament to both the woman she aspired to be and would ultimately become. Later in her life,…