{"product_id":"books-the-happy-bottom-riding-club-by-lauren-kessler","title":"The Happy Bottom Riding Club","description":"Pancho Barnes was a force of nature, a woman who lived a big, messy, colorful, unconventional life. She ran through three fortunes, four husbands, and countless lovers. She outflew Amelia Earhart, outsmarted Howard Hughes, outdrank the Mexican Army, and out- maneuvered the U.S. government. In \u003cb\u003eThe Happy Bottom Riding Club\u003c\/b\u003e, award-winning author Lauren Kessler tells the story of a high-spirited, headstrong woman who was proud of her successes, unabashed by her failures, and the architect of her own legend. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFlorence Pancho Barnes was a California heiress who inherited a love of flying from her grandfather, a pioneer balloonist in the Civil War. Faced with a future of domesticity and upper-crust pretensions, she ran away from her responsibilities as wife and mother to create her own life. She cruised South America. She trekked through Mexico astride a burro. She hitchhiked halfway across the United States. Then, in the late 1920s, she took to the skies, one of a handful of female pilots. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eShe was a barnstormer, a racer, a cross-country flier, and a Hollywood stunt pilot. She was, for a time, the fastest woman on earth, flying the fastest civilian airplane in the world. She was an intimate of movie stars, a script doctor for the great director Erich von Stroheim, and, later in life, a drinking buddy of the supersonic jet jockey Chuck Yeager. She ran a wild and wildly successful desert watering hole known as the Happy Bottom Riding Club, the raucous bar and grill depicted in The Right Stuff. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn \u003cb\u003eThe Happy Bottom Riding Club\u003c\/b\u003e, Lauren Kessler presents a portrait, both authoritative and affectionate, of a woman who didn't play by women's rules, a woman of large appetites--emotional, financial, and sexual--who called herself the greatest conversation piece that ever existed. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eFrom the Hardcover edition.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"World of Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53673335324945,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780812992526.jpg?v=1781525028","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/books-the-happy-bottom-riding-club-by-lauren-kessler","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}