A shameful episode exposed with thoroughness and a graceful pen. Highly recommended for students of the space race and...
Dogs and monkeys did it. So did American men, though some were, strictly speaking, unqualified. So did Russian women, early on. Why, then, did NASA balk at putting an All-American Girl in space?
This sharply pointed narrative adds a chapter to a growing history that treats the exclusion of American women from the professional mainstream—to say nothing of extraordinary pursuits like journeying to the moon. Debut author Ackmann (Women’s Studies/Mount Holyoke) opens her tale with a telling vignette from way back in 1957, as a crowd of reporters surrounds test pilot Jerrie Cobb on the tarmac as she’s about to nudge an Aero Commander above its record altitude of 27,000 feet. “Why does a pretty young girl like you want to spend her time around the dirt and grime and noise of airplanes?” one of the reporters asks her. Cobb and 12 of her peers—practiced aviators all, some trained or inspired by WWII female vets who had ferried flotillas of bombers across the oceans—would hear such questions again and again as they competed for spots in the Eisenhower- and Kennedy-era space program, undergoing the same daunting physical tests to which Mercury astronauts such as John Glenn were subjected. Though NASA administrator Randolph Lovelace speculated that women would fare better in space than men (if only because they weighed less), Ackmann writes, his higher-ups pulled the plug on the program even as the Mercury 13 proved their worth. When Cobb took their case to Washington, then-VP Lyndon Johnson objected, “If the United States allowed women in space, then blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, and other minorities would want to fly too.” And thus, though the legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager had argued in their favor, these highly skilled fliers were grounded, leaving it to the Russians to put a woman in space fully 20 years before the American government saw fit to do so.
A shameful episode exposed with thoroughness and a graceful pen. Highly recommended for students of the space race and women’s issues alike.Pub Date: June 10, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50744-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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