You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
rc90041 's review for:
Clunky, saccharine, and unmemorable. Like an inflight magazine article stretched to book length, full of cliches, and strained and clumsy segues between developments in space exploration and the developments in the lives of the "computers," the women who worked at JPL from the very beginning to help plot trajectories, program flight plans, and much more.
The saving graces are (1) the light that the book shines on the crucial role that the female computers--some of whom later became recognized as engineers--played at JPL and (2) the useful general overview of the development of American space exploration--though the overview will not be all that interesting or illuminating for anyone with a passing knowledge of American space exploration, or anyone who's been to a planetarium or the National Air and Space Museum.
Though the book is meant to be about the women who worked at JPL, Holt fails to make these women memorable for the reader: the various women Holt chooses to highlight are each too superficially drawn and end up blending into each other.
Overall, a shallow, quickly forgettable, surface-level read. (If you're wondering why I chose to read this, it was because one of my book clubs picked it as this month's selection.)
The saving graces are (1) the light that the book shines on the crucial role that the female computers--some of whom later became recognized as engineers--played at JPL and (2) the useful general overview of the development of American space exploration--though the overview will not be all that interesting or illuminating for anyone with a passing knowledge of American space exploration, or anyone who's been to a planetarium or the National Air and Space Museum.
Though the book is meant to be about the women who worked at JPL, Holt fails to make these women memorable for the reader: the various women Holt chooses to highlight are each too superficially drawn and end up blending into each other.
Overall, a shallow, quickly forgettable, surface-level read. (If you're wondering why I chose to read this, it was because one of my book clubs picked it as this month's selection.)