Gender and the Race for Space: Masculinity and the American Astronaut, 1957-1983

This book chronicles the history of early spaceflight and asks how American gender culture shaped the public image of the American astronaut and spaceflight technology during some of the tensest years of the Cold War era. While historians have pieced together the story of American women’s fight for spaceflight, this work adds to the narrative by analyzing masculinity and the astronaut image by focusing on how that image came to terms with a perceived Cold War masculinity crisis. The astrona...