Laurie Gwen Shapiro – författare

A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 • An NPR Book We Love 2025 • A History Best Book of 2025 • A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2025 • A New York Post Best Book of 2025 • A New York Times Editors' Choice • CBS Sunday Morning Summer Book Report Pick • New York Times “Books to Read in July” • A Town and Country Best Book of July • An Amazon Best Book of July • A Barnes & Noble Best Book of July • A LitHub Best Reviewed Nonfiction in July • A BookBub Beach Read Pick • A New Yorker Best Book We Read This Week • A 2026 Kansas Notable Book Award Winner • Southern CALIBA and MIBA Regional Bestseller“Laurie Gwen Shapiro has dug deep into the archives, and emerged with an exhilarating tale of the adventurous life of Amelia Earhart and the remarkable relationship that helped to forge her legend. Yet Shapiro goes even further—stripping away the myths and revealing something far more profound and intricate and true. The Aviator and the Showman is one terrific book.”—David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower MoonThe riveting and cinematic story of a partnership that would change the world foreverIn 1928, a young social worker and hobby pilot named Amelia Earhart arrived in the office of George Putnam, heir to the Putnam & Sons throne and hitmaker, on the hunt for the right woman for a secret flying mission across the Atlantic. A partnership—professional and soon otherwise—was born.The Aviator and the Showman unveils the untold story of Amelia's decade-long marriage to George Putnam, offering an intimate exploration of their relationship and the pivotal role it played in her enduring legacy. Despite her outwardly modest and humble image, Amelia was fiercely driven and impossibly brave, a lifelong feminist and trailblazer in her personal and professional life. Putnam, the so-called “PT Barnum of publishing” was a bookselling visionary—but often pushed his authors to extreme lengths in the name of publicity, and no one bore that weight more than Amelia. Their ahead-of-its time partnership supported her grand ambitions—but also pressed her into more and more treacherous stunts to promote her books, influencing a certain recklessness up to and including her final flight. Earhart is a captivating figure to many, but the truth about her life is often overshadowed by myth and legend. In this cinematic new account, Laurie Gwen Shapiro emphasizes Earhart’s multifaceted human side, her struggles, and her authentic aspirations, the truths behind her brave pursuits and the compromises she made to fit into societal expectations. Drawing from a trove of new sources including undiscovered audio interviews, The Aviator and the Showman is a gripping and passionate tale of adventure, colorful characters, hubris, and a complex and a vivid portrait of a marriage that shaped the trajectory of an iconic life.

Landing an internship at an ad agency isn''t what her principal or her mother wanted for Jordie Popkin, aspiring journalist. At sixteen, Jordie is glad of the chance to collect "real world" experience and finds working with the "creatives" at the agency a nice break from her math and science curriculum. And the team likes Jordie, too. When her new colleagues decide to make Jordie''s business their business, Jordie is flattered but skeptical. They will come up with a plan to market Jordie to the hottest guy in her grade. From situation analysis to "sex sells," the team assures Jordie that they know what they''re doing. She shouldn''t get upset if their ideas cause her an embarassing moment or two. Jordie knows that the course of true love never did run smooth and that the ad game isn''t a simple set of rules to follow but she can''t help wondering about the advantages of letting professionals try to turn her from Brand X into a hot item. The principles of marketing might apply to a bar of soap, but finding the right guy...?In this humorous novel, Laurie Gwen Shapiro reveals with candor how one girl who feels like "Brand X" not only learns the secret of a successful marketing campaign but also discovers how to assess her true market value to become the brand of choice.From the Hardcover edition.

The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the most remarkable feat of science and daring of the Jazz Age, The Stowaway is “a thrilling adventure that captures not only the making of a man but of a nation” (David Grann, bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon).It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet’s final frontier? Everyone wanted in on the adventure. Rockefellers and Vanderbilts begged to be taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe covered the planning’s every stage. And then, the night before the expedition’s flagship set off, Billy Gawronski—a mischievous, first-generation New York City high schooler, desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business—jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard. Could he get away with it? From the soda shops of New York’s Lower East Side to the dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica’s blinding white and deadly freeze, author Laurie Gwen Shapiro “narrates this period piece with gusto” (Los Angeles Times), taking readers on the “novelistic” (The New Yorker) and unforgettable voyage of a plucky young stowaway who became a Roaring Twenties celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps era.