"A dramatic, suspenseful tale.” —SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN “Illuminates the exploits of an unsung heroine of the space age.” —Preston Lerner, author and journalist “A beautiful story well told. Mary Sherman Morgan, a woman who toiled in obscurity and liked it that way, rises from a dirt-poor and abusive childhood to break the gender barrier in rocket engineering. She goes on to solve the last remaining problem keeping America from the stars. Mary’s contribution... would have forever vanished were it not for this book. An inspiration for women—and men—everywhere.” —Rod L. Pyle, Author of Destination Mars “This portrait of a mother shrouded in mystery and largely forgotten by the field she pioneered is a compelling read.” —Publishers Weekly “An intriguing biography.... The personal story and family detective work are truly gripping, and Mary, in all her contradictions, emerges as a fascinating subject.” —Booklist “An accessible and enjoyable read.... [It reminds] us of the need to adequately record and credit the contributions of women scientists, like Morgan, to obtain the fullest account in our history-of-science collections. Recommended.” —Library Journal “A sweeping yet intensely personal book.... [It] takes us from the windswept prairies of North Dakota, where Mary Sherman was born, to the equally windswept steppes of Kazakhstan from which Sergei Korolev would launch Sputnik..., putting the United States on a crash course to catch up. [The] race between Korolev and his American rival, ex-Nazi rocketeer Wernher von Braun is deftly interwoven with the daily lives of the unknown engineers [like Mary] who made it possible.” —Douglas L. Smith, legacy content producer, California Institute of Technology “An interesting book that sheds light on a little-known person who played a key role in the early days of the space age, one that should be more prominent given how few women were involved in aerospace at the time.” —The Space Review
If you ask your average citizen to name famous women in STEM fields, you’ll be lucky if they can identify more than one. Despite the fact that a large number of women have accomplished amazing things in science, technology, engineering, and math, Marie Curie still dominates the conversation as the one female scientist we can recall. Well, it’s 2015, and it’s […]