Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America's First Women In Space Program (Gender Relations in the American Experience)

Rating:
Summary: An excellent piece of history
Review: Margaret Weitekamp's book addresses a long-forgotten but recently rediscovered chapter in American history. At the height of the Space Race's Cold War fervor, a mix of private and public figures made several initial moves in the direction of introducing women to America's space program. None of these women ever really got close to becoming an astronaut due to an array of institutional and cultural constraints to their progress. They have been both lionized and marginalized by different camps over the last 40 years, with distortions and half-truths from every side. Weitekamp's book finally cuts through the clamor. It gathers an enormous array of rare and forgotten documents and details, along with oral history from the women themselves, to weave an authoritative narrative of the events. It should earn its place as a definitive work in this area.

Weitekamp's writing is precise and well-documented, with all the attention to sources and structure that academics need to be kept happy. Her focus is on gender (as befits the subject), but her work gradually yields a subtle examination of the perspectives, motives and positions of the women who confront its cultural manifestations. Like all good history, this reads like a movie waiting to happen. Jackie Cochran is the most intriguing character of the lot, with her political savvy and daredevil streak taking her from setting records on the tarmac to meetings in the Oval Office. Jerrie Cobb, the more public face of the original group of women at the climax of these events, suffered from a political naivety, but came to see the structural impediments to women perhaps more clearly than anyone. Easily the best piece of social and cultural history I've read this year.