LAST FLIGHT <i> by Amelia Earhart arranged by George Palmer Putnam; foreword by Walter J. Boyne (Orion Books/Crown: $9.95) </i>

“Hamlet would have been a bad aviator,” Amelia Earhart told her husband. “He worried too much.” The first woman to cross the Atlantic by air and subsequently the first woman to fly solo across it, Earhart’s last flight was intended to be a “World Flight.” The volume under review, “Last Flight,” originally released in 1937, was compiled after her disappearance by her husband, George Palmer Putnam, from her letters, diary entries; the narrative of her last ambitious journey from her cables, telephone calls, notes and pilot’s logbook.

The book talks briefly about her awakening interest in flying, her flights across the Atlantic and her flight from Hawaii to California--another first--then launches into her final venture. Her last words: “The whole width of the world has passed behind us--except this broad ocean. I shall be glad when we have the hazards of its navigation behind us.”