My first book of 2024! I picked this one up shortly after joining The Planetary Society and finding out they do a monthly book club. As the title suggests, it’s about the first six women selected by NASA for the Space Shuttle program. How does one not spoil a work of non-fiction? Is 2024 off to a good start? Read on and find out!
The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts
Author: Loren Grush
Pages: 432
Format: Hardcover
Published: September 4, 2023
Publisher: Scribner
View on Goodreads
Date Completed: January 8, 2024
My rating: 
Synopsis
The title of this book couldn’t be more descriptive. It is the story of Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon. These six remarkable women overcame insurmountable odds and broke barriers all over the place. In doing so, they each became heroes in their own right. From incredible firsts, to heartbreaking tragedy, these women paved the way for generations of women who followed.
Thoughts
As the author states in her end notes, this could have been six books – one about each of the women featured. I couldn’t agree more. I really enjoyed getting to know these women. Although a few of them were fairly private people, the author did a great job through interviews to make sure each one had some time in the spotlight and felt like real people. I mean… they were/are real people. I just feel like I got a good sense of who they were during this period of history.
The book was well-researched and easy to read. Not only was the content fascinating, from learning about the women and their specialties, to learning more about the Space Shuttle program, which I’ve always been interested in, but it was also funny and engaging. For instance, I couldn’t stop laughing when I read how Michael Collins and other male astronauts renamed the sizes of the… bathroom fixtures…
I found the couple MacGyver references a little anachronistic. Surely I enjoyed that show in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s (I never got into the reboot). But the use when talking about things in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s was a bit out of place. Instead, how about… um… like… how was there not a word for MacGyver before MacGyver came along?!
One thing I found a little strange was the choice to focus so much on the womens’ love lives. I just thought it odd when these women were trying to be pioneers, dealing with machismo, misogyny, and reporters asking questions about silly things like falling in love in space, that the book would spend so much time on this. I’m not saying it was bad. And I certainly liked learning about their personal lives. Certainly their entire lives didn’t revolve around NASA. Hell, some of them ended up with astronauts at some point or another. I just… I don’t actually know where I was going with this. It was fine, I guess.
Conclusion
Overall, this is a fascinating read. If you’re a fan of space, the shuttle program, women doing amazing things, you should definitely pick this one up. It’s 400 pages, but you’ll probably end up wishing it was more. I gave this 4 stars on Goodreads although it’s really more like 4.5.
