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mpetruce 's review for:
An interesting look at an underreported aspect of the space program and American (not to mention women's) history in general. If you're looking for a feminist treatise putting the patriarchy on blast, you're not really going to get that here. But you won't get a rose-colored "Everything was awesome" story either. You will get an accurate accounting of these women's experiences as they tell it, which no doubt leaves a few things, good and bad, out.
I did wonder about what may have been left out as far as day-to-day office culture in a male-dominated environment (you know, the casual attitudes/sexism/racism of the time, let alone overt actions, some of which are mentioned), but my overall feeling is that while JPL was no doubt a product of its time in many ways, it also was ahead of its time in others. For example, the brief section about the way the hiring process worked for a black woman, as it's outlined here, would shock and enrage many people had it happened today, but in context with the time, it reads more like a necessary means to the end of hiring someone who was well qualified to do the work that was needed. Unlike the computer programming chronicled in this book, social attitudes and change were not always a simple binary situation. But that is something more suited for a longer discussion and is difficult to boil down to a short internet review.
Again, the women interviewed here may have left things out of their recollections, and, as may have been the case with The Astronaut Wives Club, the source material may not even exist since women's history is so underreported.
A lot of ground and people are covered in this book, so listening to it takes a bit of thinking to keep everyone straight. There are some skips back and forth and sideways in time that sometimes make it hard to follow on audio, but again, that is more my problem for choosing to listen to it and my own limitations as a listener.
Now, on to Hidden Figures. The comparison/contrast should be interesting. Some commenters on this book have mentioned that east coast space program was a different atmosphere than west coast space program. Hidden Figures also has the added racial element, which this book does not touch on as much here.
I did wonder about what may have been left out as far as day-to-day office culture in a male-dominated environment (you know, the casual attitudes/sexism/racism of the time, let alone overt actions, some of which are mentioned), but my overall feeling is that while JPL was no doubt a product of its time in many ways, it also was ahead of its time in others. For example, the brief section about the way the hiring process worked for a black woman, as it's outlined here, would shock and enrage many people had it happened today, but in context with the time, it reads more like a necessary means to the end of hiring someone who was well qualified to do the work that was needed. Unlike the computer programming chronicled in this book, social attitudes and change were not always a simple binary situation. But that is something more suited for a longer discussion and is difficult to boil down to a short internet review.
Again, the women interviewed here may have left things out of their recollections, and, as may have been the case with The Astronaut Wives Club, the source material may not even exist since women's history is so underreported.
A lot of ground and people are covered in this book, so listening to it takes a bit of thinking to keep everyone straight. There are some skips back and forth and sideways in time that sometimes make it hard to follow on audio, but again, that is more my problem for choosing to listen to it and my own limitations as a listener.
Now, on to Hidden Figures. The comparison/contrast should be interesting. Some commenters on this book have mentioned that east coast space program was a different atmosphere than west coast space program. Hidden Figures also has the added racial element, which this book does not touch on as much here.