{"product_id":"9780812992526","title":"The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes","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.\u003cbr\u003e         \u003cbr\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.\u003cbr\u003e         \u003cbr\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.\u003cbr\u003e         \u003cbr\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.\"","brand":"Random House Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42416872521789,"sku":"9780812992526","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0603\/0838\/9949\/files\/9780812992526_p0.jpg?v=1771581000","url":"https:\/\/www.tatteredcover.com\/products\/9780812992526","provider":"Tattered Cover","version":"1.0","type":"link"}