Rise of the Rocket Girls (Holt)

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars
Nathalia Holt, 2016
Little, Brown & Co.
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316338929


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.(From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Nathalia Holt is an HIV researcher and science writer who is author of the books Cured: The People Who Defeated HIV (2015) and Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars (2016). She lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with her husband and children.

Holt's most recent position has been as a research fellow at the Ragon Institute—a joint project of Massacuhsetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University. Prior to Ragon, her education and work took place at the University of Southern California, Tulane University, and Humboldt State (Bioloigy, class of 2002).

Her work has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times,  Atlantic, Slate, Popular Science, and Time.

Her research as a science writer took place at the Jet Propulsion Lab archives, the Cal Tech Library, and the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard. (Adapted from Wikipedia and the publisher. Retrieved 4/24/2016.)

Book Reviews
This highly readable, entertaining and informative book tells the story of JPL's 'computers,' the young women who did the calculations now handled by bits of silicon. Holt brings her characters to life, tracing them from their hiring as JPL began its career with the Army developing missiles for the Cold War through its conversion to NASA's lead center for planetary exploration. She celebrates their lives, achievements, and service to the nation, as well as their excitement at having front row seats to the earliest voyages of solar system exploration. It's a story whose telling is long overdue. We can be grateful for this enjoyable read.
Dr. Charles Elachi - Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Planetary Science


Illuminating...these women are vividly depicted at work, at play, in and out of love, raising children—and making history. What a team—and what a story!
Gene Seymour - USA Today


(Starred review.) [T]he lives and work of the women who provided the fledgling Jet Propulsion Lab with computing power, in this accessible and human-centered history.... Holt’s accessible and heartfelt narrative celebrates the women whose crucial roles in American space science often go unrecognized.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Holt seamlessly blends the technical aspects of rocket science and mathematics with an engaging narrative, making for an imminently readable and well-researched work. —Crystal Goldman
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Those interested in space history will find much to enjoy here, but it is the stories of the women involved, highlighted in sections by decade, that commands attention.... [Holt's] stellar research is evident on every page. This is an excellent contribution to American history. —Colleen Mondor
Booklist


[E]ngaging.... Besides chronicling the development of America’s space program, Holt recounts the women’s private lives—marriages, babies, and the challenge of combining motherhood and work—gleaned from her interviewees’ vivid memories. A fresh contribution to women’s history.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add the publisher's questions if and when they're available. In the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to kick off a discussion for Rise of the Rocket Girls...then take off on your own:

1. Talk about the individual women and their stories which comprise Rise of the Rocket Girls. Whose story did you find most interesting, whose path perhaps more difficult than others'? In what way do their stories shed light on the greater cultural changes taking place then...and now?

2. Talk about the obstacles in the paths of these women...and the unfairness they overcame to gain acceptance to (or in) the rarefied atmosphere of the Jet Propulsion Lab.

3. Most everyone who reads and/or reviews this book has been surprised by the important role women played in the rocket program. Why have their contributions taken so long to be widely recognized?

4. Holt offers the story of Barbara Canright calculating and graphing the course of a satellite. "Behind her she could sense Richard Feynman...her every move was being carefully watched." In the very next paragraph, Holt adds a detail about Barbara's boyfriend who had kissed her before she left home. Today that domestic scene might not seem such a strange juxtaposition, but in that era there was a fair amount of ambivalence and confusion about women who performed typically male jobs and yet had—gasp!—families or male partners.

What other juxtapositions did you notice in Holt's account of these women doing traditional male jobs...yet exhibiting traditionally "female behavior" or falling prey to demeaning male attitudes? To what extent, if any, do those kinds of juxtapositions exist today?

5. What was the irony of JPL finally promoting the original "human computers" to the title of engineers? Why did it end up contracting rather than expanding opportunities for women at the lab?

6. All the calculations done by the "human computers" were done working with pencils, graph paper, and notebooks—and it could take a day to calculate a single rocket's trajectory. What was the attitude at JPL toward the first IBM 704 when it arrived in the late 1950s? What eventually spurred the use of computers in rocket science?

7. Talk about the close-knit group the women formed for themselves, which included those working in both technical and non-technical jobs. What kind of support did they offer one another no matter what their professional status? 

8. Holt notes at the end of the book that there are more women working at JPL now than at any other NASA center. Consider doing some research into the numbers of women in math and science and whether or not they reflect women's positions in the wider society.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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