NONFICTION : The Girls Next Door: A 12th-Century Mystic, a Spy, an Aviatrix, a Persian Princess, a Mother and a Journalist

STILL MISSING: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism by Susan Ware. (Norton: $22; 304 pp.) Rather than add new possibilities to Earhart’s mysterious disappearance on July 2, 1937, Ware places Amelia in the context of her time, the 1920s and ‘30s, and in the context of women’s history. But still and always, missing or living next door in New Jersey, she emerges as more metaphor than person, the (gulp) “soaring of women’s aspirations” in the (gulp) “story of modern feminism.” And alas, writes Ware, “The equality and opportunities that Amelia Earhart tirelessly promoted for women are still missing. Just as the search continues for relics of Earhart’s plane . . . so too, does the quest for women’s equality.” Just a minute. This is the girl from Kansas who, when asked why she did what she did once said, “I like to fly, and I’m restless,” a woman who just wanted to “fly and fly and fly.” She personifies, she symbolizes, she embodies and she represents. She must be very tired wherever she is.