Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space

Rating:
Summary: Puzzling.
Review: I am surprised just how much is wrong in this book. I am even more puzzled by the unquestioning support given to it by luminaries such as John Klineberg and Mary Ellen Strote. While a writer on health and fitness topics should not be expected to have a thorough knowledge of space history and know how many errors this book contains, I would have thought that Klineberg, former director of Loral and the Goddard Space Flight Center, would have read it a little closer and spotted the many errors. It's puzzling to see how many glowing reviews this book is receiving despite its deep flaws.

Rating:
Summary: great story with a few glaring gaffes
Review: Let me start by adding that I just received my copy of this amazing story a couple of weeks ago, and was awed by it. Quite a wonderful read about a most amazingly hidden aspect of the space program.

Okay, several have previously stated that there are no major technical errors in the book. On page 46, when describing Skylab, she notes that the pace station was 17 cubic feet, divided into two separate levels. Since the trunk of my Jetta is 13 cubic feet, I decided to check this out with NASA. Skylab had a habitable volume of 12,700 cubic feet. That is a major error that can not go unnoticed.

If this book is republished, I hope this type of minor error gets corrected. If not, poor editing will continue to diminish an otherwise important topic and marvelously crafted tome.

Rating:
Summary: A good book? Almost.
Review: This is an interesting book with a lot to say on the subject of women astronauts. On the whole, the events and the people involved in them are very well summarized, far better than many other books in fact. There are some wonderful little vignettes into how the 1978 women astronauts were integrated into the Texas social scene, which were very well observed. Pat Cowings, often overlooked as the first woman to undertake serious astronaut training directed by NASA (though she was never selected as an astronaut), gets her correct place in history at last. It also puts the FLAT medical tests in their correct place as a minor footnote in space history. It lists the womens' movement accomplishments and the changes they brought as interesting background, not allowing the politics to overtake the human story. The misreading of S. Christa McAuliffe's respected place in Concord's educational community hits a minor jarring note, but overall Holtzmann Kevles is a very accomplished writer, gets the facts straight and tells an interesting story very well.

Having said that, I really do wish that "friends of the author" would not make postings on these pages and pretend that the book is error-free. Wishing the mistakes weren't there does not make them disappear. The copy I picked up (from a book store, not a pre release copy) has all the errors that other reviewers have been kind enough to post here for the edification of the prospective purchaser (and, let's hope, the author and publisher). A simple read would find them. Just as examples, the misinformation on Lebedev is on page 87, the misdating of the first shuttle launch on page 94, the error about the last woman to Mir on page 163, spelling NASA's name wrong on page 252, Cobb's name wrong on page 253, Chaffee's name wrong on page 221, and the howling error of the wrong date of the Apollo 11 moon landing in the book's very first paragraph. I noticed another mistake also, on page 141 - Helen Sharman, like all other cosmonauts, was fitted into her space suit before her bus ride to the launch pad, not afterwards as Holtzmann Kevles believes.

I hope that the author's friends have the courage to tell her what needs correcting, and not continue to defend the indefensible. Fiction writing is allowed to play with events, and even history is open to interpretation. Holtzmann Kevles' theme, her message, is worthy and dead on. However getting basic names and dates correct (and they are mostly subjective errors of fact, not simple "typos" here ) in a history book is, I believe, essential. Save your money for a corrected second edition, assuming the publisher does the right thing.

Rating:
Summary: Mixed reaction... but worth reading.
Review: Well, it's getting a mixed reaction (from me and, by the look of these reviews, from other readers) and I think that is quite understandable. I bought the book last week as the premise sounded interesting - but I had also taken the time to print out the reviews on this site. I am glad I did. I don't know if there is more than one edition out there, but the one I picked up, which has the exact same cover as the picture on this site, and came from a public bookstore, had all the errors in it that the other reviewers listed below. In some places, Holtzmann Kevles had spelled a name right, in other places got it wrong - the same with dates - so that a quick flick through the book would not have revealed them. But I was pleased and grateful that those other reviewers had found all those errors, as it allowed me to note all the page numbers and create my own 'errata sheet' for my copy.

I found the book a fascinating read - it really told the story of women in space very, very well - and Holtzmann Kevles seems to have interviewed some very interesting people who rarely made public pronouncements. She has dug behind the scenes to get some very insightful information on some very little-known areas. It's an important book for anyone interested in space history.

Having said that, it is let down by those incorrect facts. Hopefully someone can relay the mistakes the two reviewers took the time and trouble to add to this site (thank you!) to both Holtzmann Kevles and the publisher, so that they can be spared further embarrassment if a second edition is ever published. They are all there, and not too hard to find if they read the book again. Many are in the timeline in the back.

I must agree also, that while this book is on the whole fair to Christa McAuliffe, there is that one sentence that seems out of place and, frankly, mean. Luckily it is just one nasty point in an otherwise very even-handed book.

Rating:
Summary: A MEAN-SPIRITED SLUR ON AN AMERICAN INSPIRATION
Review: While this book is a great read, with some very interesting viewpoints on some little-known NASA and Russian insider politics, it is full of mistakes which mean it quickly becomes impossible to know which parts of Kevles's research to trust. The factual errors begin on the first paragraph of the prologue - the very first paragraph in the book - where Kevles states the Apollo 11 moon landing took place on July 18th. It did, of course, take place on July 20th, something that ANY space author should be able to get right. This is the kind of basic, easily-checked and unforgivable error that some who held a chair position at the National Air and Space Museum should be ashamed to have in their book. Other similar, basic mistakes abound. Kevles says the first shuttle launch took place in 1982, when it was in fact in 1981. For Challenger's final flight, she lists Ron McNair as sitting upstairs in the shuttle, when he was in fact on the lower flight deck. For the Columbia disaster, she says that McCool was a mission specialist - he was in fact the pilot. She misspells Apollo 1 astronaut Roger Chaffee's name as 'Chafee,' and Jerrie Cobb as 'Jerri.' She says Roberta Bondar was 'one of two' Canadian astronauts selected in 1983, when she was in fact one in six. The remains of shuttle Challenger were not recovered in water only up to 73 feet down, as Kevles states - in fact, recovery took place in waters up to 1,300 feet deep. She says Resnick and McAuliffe "perished in space' when, in fact, the Challenger disaster took place only 15 kms. up, easily visible from the ground and lower than many aircraft flights. Kevles says that Helen Sharman was the first woman to visit any space station, despite her coverage of Savitskaya's mission to a space station earlier in the book. She says that Andre-Deshays was 'the fourth and final woman to visit Mir' - when, in fact, SEVEN women visited Mir after her (Lucid remained after her, and Ivins, Kondakova, Eileen Collins, Bonnie Dunbar, Wendy Lawrence and Janet Kavandi all visited the station long after Andre-Deshays on shuttle flights to Mir.) She also says Andre-Deshays was 'the only west European women to have flown in space' - forgetting Helen Sharman. She even gets NASA's name wrong, calling it the 'National Aeronautic and Space Administration,' instead of 'Aeronautics.'

The lowest point of the book, in my opinion, comes when Kevles says that Teacher In Space Christa "McAuliffe had never been considered the best teacher in Concord, or even an especially popular one." There is NO evidence given to support this outrageous statement in the book, and in fact it runs counter to EVERY statement made by those who did work with McAuliffe. She was not considered the best science teacher of NASA's finalists, but was considered an outstanding teacher by her students and school district, with innovative classes that everyone loved. Kevles' mean-spirited and untruthful statement here is an unnecessary slap in the face of this deceased teacher, and her living relatives and friends (I can only hope they do not see the book).