Rise of the Rocket Girls

The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars

By: Nathalia Holt

Narrated by: Erin Bennett

Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space.

In the 1940s and '50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible.

For the first time, Rise of the Rocket Girls tells the stories of these women - known as "human computers" - who broke the boundaries of both gender and science. Based on extensive research and interviews with all the living members of the team, Rise of the Rocket Girls offers a unique perspective on the role of women in science: both where we've been and the far reaches of space to which we're heading.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2016 Nathalia Holt (P)2016 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"Engaging history...a fresh contribution to women's history." ( Kirkus)

"The immediacy of Holt's writing makes readers feel as if they're alongside the women during their first view of Jupiter, and beyond." (Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal)

"I stole sleep to finish this book and was happy to do so. I admire how Holt gives voice to a group of important (and lesser-known) female scientists who have in the past been overshadowed by their male counterparts. The domestic and the scientific are elegantly rendered - it is an impressive contribution to American history and I was sad to turn the last page." (TaraShea Nesbit, best-selling author of The Wives of Los Alamos)

Disappointing and trivial

I really struggling to finish this book. I kept pushing myself to continue and finally gave up just after the halfway point. I started reading this book with the hope that it would include details about the work these women did and insights/case studies about their struggles. It ended up being mostly comprised of generic descriptions and was lean on details. there were too many people to keep track of and there wasn't a clear focus on the work they did or the differences between their experiences and the men's experiences.

Women, science, and progress

In the first half of the 20th century, the word "computer" meant a person who did heavy-duty computation. During the Second World War and the years following, this included doing the computation for missile development. When the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was created, computers were in great demand there.

And at JPL, something special happened.

Many of the early computers hired there were women.They were working closely with the engineers, who were all men; women were simply not hired as engineers, no matter what their qualifications. The woman who became head of the computer department decided she would only hire women.

This was not an era of gender equality. Women expected, and were expected, to marry and become mothers. There was no maternity leave, so a married working woman who became pregnant had no alternative but to quit.

But the women working at JPL became a bonded group, as much a family as a group of coworkers. And over the years, they worked to professionalize themselves, and to professionalize their image in the minds of their male coworkers. As the first machine computers were developed and brought in, it was the women computers who learned to use and program them. Both before and after the arrival of the machines, it was the women writing the programs that made both missiles and rockets fly.

This book follows the lives, professional and personal, of the women who first were JPL's computers, and later became the programmers of computers, and finally were recognized as engineers in their own right. They were a major component of the growth of NASA, and the development of the space program. We get to see the tensions between their personal lives and their professional lives, as well as the role they played in pushing the robot-based exploration of the solar system--missions to Venus, Mars, and beyond. It's a complex and stirring tale, and an important piece of both social and scientific history. The early parts especially, for younger readers (and by that I mean readers in their thirties, not kids) is likely to read like an account of an alien, or at the very least foreign, society.

So much progress has happened in my lifetime. I'd hate to see us go backward.

Highly recommended.

I bought this book.

The History of Women at JPL Celebrated

I am angry and overjoyed to read this. Angry that this history wasn't taught to me in school along with the achievements of men. Overjoyed to at least be learning it now. Its motivating me to finish my stem degree and keep learning and achieving with confidence. Women aren't the exception in history, they are there in every nook and cranny of history, working hard and contributing in unfathomable ways. Women are the foundation and the strength of society and our contributions today are continuing a LONG legacy.

Inspiring!!

I loved this book and can’t wait to share it with my girls. I finished the book feeling so proud of everything the women accomplished in their lifetime. What an amazing part of history. Thank you for telling their story.

A little uneven, but still very interesting.

A wonderful look into the lives of women in rocketry. Skips around chronologically, but overall an interesting and important work.

amazing

You don't have to be a woman to feel empowered by the women in this book.

Fantastic!

A great listen with so much interesting history mixed with sympathetic women characters. A real gem.

Inspirational and Enthralling

from start to finish, this book is fantastic! It is so inspiring to hear what these women went through and they handled the situations during a time when women in the workplace were not commonplace.

More such stories please

Loved It! Well researched and wonderfully told. Eyes welled with tears when it was coming to an end.

Toooo much

I just had to quit half way through. It should have been an interesting listen but I contentiously found myself wandering and not listening. The flipping back and forth in time was very confusing and I really got lost in all of the characters that were introduced and then never heard of again. The history should have been more interesting🙁