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392 reviews for:
Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars
Nathalia Holt
3.8 AVERAGE
392 reviews for:
Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars
Nathalia Holt
3.8 AVERAGE
This book was a mixed bag for me. I was very interested in learning about these pioneering women and the men who supported them in their careers, and it didn’t disappoint on that front. I also learned A LOT about the space missions that I didn’t know.
That being said, I got bogged down in the science at times and I was a scientist (albeit a geneticist, not a physicist or mathematician). I also found the story to jump around too much. I guess it was hard to tell all of these women’s stories without rehashing everything a million times but I kept getting lost. Maybe it is my corona brain.
At the end of the day, I’m glad I read it but I was also counting down the pages for half the book, which isn’t exactly a glowing endorsement.
That being said, I got bogged down in the science at times and I was a scientist (albeit a geneticist, not a physicist or mathematician). I also found the story to jump around too much. I guess it was hard to tell all of these women’s stories without rehashing everything a million times but I kept getting lost. Maybe it is my corona brain.
At the end of the day, I’m glad I read it but I was also counting down the pages for half the book, which isn’t exactly a glowing endorsement.
Trying to cover 40 years of history based off interviews and trying to connect it to actual events.... that's a lot of ground to cover. It does it in broad sweeping views, but (due to lack of information) glosses over the "rise of feminism" issues I was hoping for some insight on. I wanted to know more about the actual working life in the 1940 and 1950s and gender dynamics.
I'm a female engineer in a male-dominated profession, so a book about the unknown women who supported JPL in its early days sounded really interesting. However, I only got through the first chapter before realizing that the book focused only on the women themselves, not on any the projects that they worked on.
I was hoping for something with a lot more technical detail. Either the author chose not to focus on that area or she didn't have the technical expertise to cover it. (Which may have been a good decision -- better to not cover something than to do it badly.)
"She repeated the calculation many times, sliding the numbers into the equation with the ease of slipping on a pair of shoes." (Because women are all about their shoes, right? Ugh.)
An entire year of work developing the rockets for the first jet-propelled bomber is elided between paragraphs. (Ugh again.)
I was hoping for something with a lot more technical detail. Either the author chose not to focus on that area or she didn't have the technical expertise to cover it. (Which may have been a good decision -- better to not cover something than to do it badly.)
"She repeated the calculation many times, sliding the numbers into the equation with the ease of slipping on a pair of shoes." (Because women are all about their shoes, right? Ugh.)
An entire year of work developing the rockets for the first jet-propelled bomber is elided between paragraphs. (Ugh again.)
An interesting look at the history of space exploration through the women who made it possible. An important reminder of the women of science, often under-recognized, but still incredibly important.
adventurous
emotional
informative
medium-paced
I don’t like the narrator. I was really bored didn’t pay any attention to the audiobook. Maybe I’ll pick up a print version eventually.
Probably a good 3.5. This is the book I wanted Hidden Figures to be--a lively history of interesting women computers who shared their lives, struggles, and careers in male dominated science fields. The science was accessible and the characters well drawn and interesting.
Really interesting, but in some places the writing felt a little flat, and not as well-written as the rest of the book.
A story about amazing, inspiring women. The writing style didn't do their stories justice though
3.5 stars. This book draws comparisons to Hidden Figures for obvious reasons, but Rise of the Rocket Girls is less coherently written, and the narrative jumps from character to character and anecdote to anecdote, which makes it choppy to read. I understand that Holt was trying to humanize the characters, but I felt like her constant fixation on the women's clothes and romantic drama undermined their presentation as incredibly smart mathematicians and engineers in their own right, not to mention their roles as groundbreaking figures as women working in science. I also wish she had further interrogated prevailing social mores of the various decades (sexism, racism, etc.) and gone deeper into the cultural context.
As for the actual work at the Jet Propulsion Lab, this book gave me a much better appreciation for how difficult it was difficult to get literally anything (even a small probe) into space, and it helped put the later accomplishments of space exploration into perspective. Some diagrams would have helped make sense of the various trajectories the women were trying to calculate, but I mostly followed along with the descriptions. Holt clearly did her research and interviews, as the notes at the end showed, but the writing style could come across as a little simplistic, especially in contrast to the serious scientific work she was recalling.
In some ways, I felt like this book was written to appeal to teenagers (especially girls) who may not have a lot of interest in science but are open to reading about it. Which is certainly not a bad thing (I emphasize!) but as someone who reads 50% nonfiction and a good number of popular science books, I felt like I was a little bit outside the target audience of this book. If you don't normally read a lot of nonfiction or science books, don't be afraid to pick this up — but if you do, set your expectations accordingly, especially if you really loved Hidden Figures.
As for the actual work at the Jet Propulsion Lab, this book gave me a much better appreciation for how difficult it was difficult to get literally anything (even a small probe) into space, and it helped put the later accomplishments of space exploration into perspective. Some diagrams would have helped make sense of the various trajectories the women were trying to calculate, but I mostly followed along with the descriptions. Holt clearly did her research and interviews, as the notes at the end showed, but the writing style could come across as a little simplistic, especially in contrast to the serious scientific work she was recalling.
In some ways, I felt like this book was written to appeal to teenagers (especially girls) who may not have a lot of interest in science but are open to reading about it. Which is certainly not a bad thing (I emphasize!) but as someone who reads 50% nonfiction and a good number of popular science books, I felt like I was a little bit outside the target audience of this book. If you don't normally read a lot of nonfiction or science books, don't be afraid to pick this up — but if you do, set your expectations accordingly, especially if you really loved Hidden Figures.