Liam Callanan: Stone Age Astronaut

Nationally bestselling author and beloved UWM Professor Liam Callanan, author of books such as When in Rome and Paris by the Book, appears at Boswell for a special evening with his first work of nonfiction, Stone Age Astronaut: The Astonishing Adventures of America's Forgotten Flier. Callanan's new book is a soaring adventure, a riveting biography, and a reclamation of a great American story lost to history. In Stone Age Astronaut, Callanan uncovers the astonishing life of Lester Maitland, the Milwaukee-born aviator who, in 1927, became the first person to fly to Hawaii, earning national acclaim on par with Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic triumph. But while Lindbergh’s legacy grew, Maitland’s all but vanished. The pages of Stone Age Astronaut hum with the tension and excitement of early aviation, rendered in a richly detailed narrative and Callanan’s research, spanning archives, newspapers, interviews, and travel to key sites, to reveal the remarkable sweep of Maitland’s world.  With sparkling prose and a storyteller’s instinct for detail, Callanan resurrects a man whose life intersected with major events, eras, and personalities, but who has inexplicably slipped through the cracks of American memory. A gripping portrait of ambition, innovation, fame, failure, and reinvention - and the enduring human urge to fly - Stone Age Astronaut ensures that Lester Maitland’s extraordinary story will no longer be forgotten.