mezzosherri 's review for:

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars by Nathalia Holt

4.0

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Holt tells an engaging, enlightening and entertaining story about the women who worked as, first, "human computers," and later as engineers at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Although I'd known a tiny bit in passing about the role women played in supporting early space exploration, this book gave me a much richer understanding of the depth of their contribution, as well as the barriers these professionals faced due to their gender. I appreciated Holt's efforts to interweave the personal and professional narratives of her subjects, but some of the personal interjections were abrupt and shallow enough to be a bit jarring.