In 1967, Coffee, Tea, or Me? The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses captured the world’s imagination with tales of amorous adventures. Decades later, Donald Blain revealed that as a publicist for American Airlines, he actually wrote the book and its sequels, and two female flight attendants were hired to pose as the authors for book tours. Although the stunt sounds like something from “Mad Men,” readers fell for it hook, line and sinker, casting an indelible reputation on the profession.

“The industry saw no reason not to capitalize on male fantasy,” writes Julia Cooke in the fascinating Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am. Cooke has created a sweeping account of not only the airline industry and its cultural history but also women’s evolution in the workforce. She blends an overview of the job with the personal stories of several (real!) flight attendants, dispelling ludicrous myths and showing how Pan Am presented adventurous, curious women with a way to see the world at a time when their opportunities were limited.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Author Julia Cooke shares her thoughts on air travel and offers some suggestions for making your own glamour when you take to the skies.

Stewardess positions were so coveted in the 1960s that in 1968, over 266,000 women applied for 12,000 spots in the American airline industry. Many of these young women, such as biology major Lynne Totten from upstate New York, saw the job as an exciting chance to try something new. Years later, when a male passenger spotted Totten reading an issue of Scientific American, he suggested that Vogue might be a better choice. She quickly set him straight, but Totten was hardly an anomaly. As Cooke points out, “throughout the 1960s, 10 percent of Pan Am stewardesses had attended graduate school at a time when only 8 percent of American women had graduated from college.”

Despite the unparalleled opportunities offered by Pan Am, these stewardesses had to pave their own way, fighting against weight and height limits, age ceilings, marriage bans, racism and other glass ceilings that prevented them from being offered management positions.

An entertaining and informative narrator, Cooke has a big story to tell and excels at painting her panorama in broad strokes. At times, however, readers may find themselves wishing for a few more anecdotes, as well as more direct quotations from the women she profiles. Nonetheless, many of her accounts are memorable, especially those involving Pan Am’s flights to Vietnam, which Cooke covers extensively and in which young American men reading Archie comics were dropped off, many to never return.

Come Fly the World is an eye-opening account of female flight attendants’ successes and struggles in the not-so-distant past.

When she was 17, Kristen Richardson was invited to become a debutante. The prospect of being on display held no interest for her, but as Richardson attended the ritualized “coming-out” parties of friends, she became fascinated by the enduring upper-class ritual, which has been largely overlooked by historians. In The Season: A Social History of the Debutante, Richardson argues that if we dismiss such traditions, “we miss a key part of women’s history, and of the history of marriage as well.”

Readers of Jane Austen and Regency romances are, of course, familiar with the role that “the season” played in early 19th-century England. For middle-class families with marriageable daughters, a season involved considerable preparation, expense and sacrifice: renting a house in London, scrambling for acceptance at Almack’s assembly rooms, getting a suitable wardrobe. And there was always the pressure on debutantes to make a “successful” marriage. 

What makes Richardson’s account of debutante rituals so fascinating is her exploration of how the practice was exported to the United States, with dancing masters in demand in cities like Charleston and Philadelphia in the 1740s. Blending research and vignettes, she expertly traces the practice through old New York, the antebellum South and into the Gilded Age, when girls outside the tightknit structure of New York society went abroad to seek a husband or a title. (Think Cora, the Countess of Grantham, in “Downton Abbey.”) 

Richardson brings her chronology up to modern times, revealing how presentations, sometimes organized by closed secret societies, continue in cities like Charleston, New Orleans, St. Louis and San Antonio. There’s even an explosion of debutantes in China and Russia. One chapter explores African American debutantes and social clubs, where events have often included a charitable aspect with a focus on community service and education. 

The debutante ball, it turns out, isn’t a thing of the past at all. Sometimes young women use it to create a persona or promote a personal brand. But as Richardson reminds us in this engaging and thought-provoking history, the use of daughters to cement power and wealth is very hard to give up. 

You can get away with quite a lot if no one takes you very seriously. Like carrying military intelligence about the Union army through enemy lines to deliver it to the Confederates. Or hiding Union POW escapees in your attic while Confederate officers are boarding downstairs at your home. 

You get the picture: Women were largely dismissed as flighty, inferior creatures in Victorian times. That attitude helped several become some of the most effective spies of the Civil War. Again and again, the women who are the focus of Karen Abbott’s exciting Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War came close to discovery or death, only to be saved by their enemies’ sexism.

Not that Belle Boyd, Rose Greenhow, Emma Edmonds and Elizabeth Van Lew were ordinary women. They were all strong-minded, daring and difficult. Edmonds was perhaps the most astonishing: Escaping an abusive father in Canada, she masqueraded as a young man and joined the Union army. She kept up the game so well that she became an army scout, “cross-dressed” as a woman.

Confederates Greenhow and Boyd were flamboyant women who used sexual attraction in the service of their cause and were too indiscreet to retain their effectiveness. Pro-Union Van Lew, however, was a wealthy, circumspect middle-aged spinster. She carefully built a large, lasting spy and prisoner-escape network in Richmond, even infiltrating an African-American secret agent into Jefferson Davis’ house as a servant.

This is compelling material, and Abbott, best-selling author of Sin in the Second City, cross-cuts among the stories to produce dramatic cliff-hangers. Her depiction of Greenhow’s tragic end will move any reader, whatever one may think of the Confederate cause.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

With today’s relentless news cycle, it’s easy to forget the genesis of our current media fascinations. You may think that the 1990s was when the media, celebrity trials and America’s love for gawking oozed together to create the concept of the courtroom as an entertainment venue. The truth is, you have to go back a bit.

Douglas Perry’s The Girls of Murder City provides a captivating look at the killer women who dominated headlines in Chicago and across the United States in 1924. More than a dozen women called Murderess’ Row in the Cook County Jail home, but two grabbed most of the attention: Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan. Cabaret dancer Belva’s meeting with her drunken lover ended with him fatally shot and her glamorous clothes blood-splattered. And after shooting her lover in the apartment she shared with her husband, 23-year-old Beulah danced to her favorite record, “Hula Lou.”

Dripping with scandal, beauty and savvy, these women had a glorious chance to deliver the performances of a lifetime. They didn’t disappoint. Covering this for the Chicago Tribune was rookie reporter Maurine Watkins, who took her bitterness over the women’s manipulation of the system—Beulah changed her shooting story three times and the all-male jury still let her walk—and turned it into a hit Broadway play, Chicago.

Perry takes a sturdy foundation of murder, sex and Chicago’s scandal-happy newspapers and builds a nonfiction marvel. His bouncy, exuberant prose perfectly complements the theatricality of the proceedings, and he deftly maneuvers away from the main story without ever losing momentum. Perry uncovers illuminating background details on the Chicago newspaper wars and the female inmates who took a backseat to Belva and Beulah, and pushes Watkins back into the spotlight. He captures the pulse of a city that made New York look like a suburban block party. The Girls of Murder City not only illustrates the origins of a new media monster, but reminds us that we’ve never been that innocent.