There's no transport more glamorous than Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Vega 5B aircraft, now hangared in the Smithsonian, Washington. It looks as if it had been lacquered with scarlet nail varnish; she called it her "red bus". Like its pilot, it balanced stubborn competence, achieved through work (Earhart wasn't a natural flier), and marketable celebrity. Most of the marketing - the books, the lecture tours - was done by her husband, George Putnam, to whom Lovell gives equal space, as seems only fair to their egalitarian relationship. Theirs was a modern marriage between a couple who seem like holdovers from frontier America, and predictors of a future that hasn't quite arrived even now. Earhart was emotionally reticent, and Lovell respects that: no coarse speculations about what she felt when. Lovell also loves early pilots' mix of diligence and irresponsibility, as well as the possibilities inherent in the Lockheed, despite its chicken-coop cockpit proportions; dangerous fun was to be had.