Book excerpt: Fasten Your Seat Belts! is the first history of an airline to be told from the view point of its cabin crew. Through hundreds of interviews, Valerie Lester has encouraged Pan Am's flight attendants to recount their personal dramatic, tragic, comic & heroic stories, many of which deserve to take an honored place in the annals of air transport history. She includes accounts of the heroic deeds of the cabin crews in such incidents as the 1947 crash in the Syrian desert; the terrorism in Cairo & Rome; the last flight from Saigon; the holocaust at Tenerife; & the siege at Karachi. There are tales of the first stewards & their experiences during World War II; Pan Am's brave & resourceful first stewardesses; the first round-the-world flights (both planned & unplanned); the White House Press charters; the advent of jets--& of bigger jets; Desert Storm; & Pan Am's final, heart-rendering flight. Until now, the important role that flight attendants have played in the history of civil aviation has been poorly served. Here, at last, is a book that redresses the balance.