Riassunto
Riassunto di 20 Ore e 40 minuti
A chi è rivolto
For readers who love true adventure, early aviation and the first-hand voice of a pioneer, and anyone curious about Earhart before her later fame.
Che cos’è questo libro
In June 1928 a three-person crew flew a Fokker seaplane named Friendship from Newfoundland to Wales. One of them was Amelia Earhart, a Boston social worker and trained pilot. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air. She was a passenger on the flight, not the pilot, and she says so plainly. This book is her own account of it, written soon afterward and published in 1928.
The title is the flying time, twenty hours and forty minutes. The book gives you the whole adventure. You see how she was chosen, who she flew with, the long wait for weather, the hours over the sea and the noisy welcome on the far shore. You also hear a young woman thinking about what flying meant in an age when it was still dangerous. Let us begin with the odd way the chance came to her.
In questo riassunto
- 1A telephone call changes a quiet lifeFree
- 2She is a passenger, and says so
- 3Weather decides when the flight begins
- 4Twenty hours above cloud and sea
- 5Landing in Wales and meeting the crowds
- 6What flying means to Earhart
Punto chiave 1 di 6
A telephone call changes a quiet life
Before 1928 Amelia Earhart was not a public figure. She worked at Denison House, a settlement house in Boston, where she helped immigrant families and their children. She flew in her spare time and held a pilot's license, which was rare for a woman then. Flying was her passion, but it was not yet her career.
The chance came by telephone. A representative of a wealthy backer asked whether she would like to join a flight across the Atlantic. The backer was Amy Guest, an American living in Britain, who had bought a plane for the crossing. She wanted the first woman to cross by air to be an American woman. Earhart was asked to meet people in New York who would judge whether she was suited to the role.
She describes her own surprise with a light touch. She did not think of herself as a hero, and she did not pretend otherwise. She weighed the risk, which was real, since several fliers had died trying to cross the ocean. Then she said yes.
This opening matters because it sets the tone of the whole book. Earhart presents herself as someone who was offered a rare opportunity and took it, not as someone who planned a record. The modesty is part of her charm, and it shapes how she tells everything that follows.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about 20 Ore e 40 minuti
What is 20 Hrs., 40 Min. about?
It is Amelia Earhart's own account of the 1928 flight of the Friendship from Newfoundland to Wales. It covers how she was chosen, the wait for weather, the long flight over the Atlantic and the welcome in Britain.
Did Amelia Earhart fly the plane on the 1928 Atlantic flight?
No. Wilbur Stultz was the pilot and Louis Gordon the mechanic. Earhart was a passenger who kept the flight log. She says this openly in the book and gives the crew credit for the crossing.
What does the title 20 Hrs., 40 Min. mean?
It is the time the flight took, twenty hours and forty minutes, from taking off in Newfoundland to landing in Wales in June 1928. The title puts the achievement into a single measure of time.
Is 20 Hrs., 40 Min. a true story, and when was it written?
Yes. It is a first-hand account of a real flight in June 1928, written soon afterward and published that same year, with help from her publisher George Palmer Putnam.
Is Earhart's book easy to read?
Yes. The language is plain and brisk, and the book is short. It reads like a lively magazine account, with little technical jargon, so general readers can follow it easily.