West with the Night
West with the Night is a 1942 memoir by
Ernest Hemingway was deeply impressed with Markham's writing, saying
"she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers ... it really is a bloody wonderful book." [citation needed]
Markham was the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west in a non-stop solo flight (a westbound flight requires more endurance, fuel, and time than the eastward journey, because the craft must travel against the prevailing Atlantic winds). When Markham decided to take on the Atlantic crossing, no pilot had yet flown non-stop from Europe to New York, and no woman had completed the westward flight solo, though several had died trying. Markham hoped to claim both records.
On 4 September 1936, she took off from
Notes
- ^ Armed Services Editions list by title, No. F-166
- ^ Brandt, Anthony (May 2004). "Extreme Classics: The 100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time". National Geographic Adventure. Archived from the original on 2 September 2004. Additional pages archived on 22 July 2004: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5.
- ISBN 0-312-01096-6p. 175
- ^ Swopes, Bryan. "This Day in Aviation – 4-5 September 1936". thisdayinaviation.com. Retrieved September 25, 2023.