captainjaq '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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Really, it's a 3.5 star book, but we'll give it the benefit of the doubt. It's an incredibly well researched piece of fascinating history. The problem, I think, is that Ms. Holt is trying to do too much. If she had focused on one or two of the women and really given us their characters or focused on JPL through the women, without giving us the personal stories of marriages and kids, then I think the book would have been much stronger.

As it was, we get an amazing amount of detail, but nothing to really anchor it to anything. Some important things felt like they got short shrift while seemingly inconsequential minutiae was dwelt on in agonizing detail.