Review (PDF) The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story
Read the bestselling book that inspired the ABC television series.As America's Mercury Seven astronauts were launched on death-defying missions, television cameras focused on the brave smiles of their young wives. Overnight, these women were transformed from military spouses into American royalty. They had tea with Jackie Kennedy, appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and quickly grew into fashion icons.Annie Glenn, with her picture-perfect marriage, was the envy of the other wives; JFK made it clear that platinum-blonde Rene Carpenter was his favorite; and licensed pilot Trudy Cooper arrived with a secret that needed to stay hidden from NASA. Together with the other wives they formed the Astronaut Wives Club, providing one another with support and friendship, coffee and cocktails.As their celebrity rose-and as divorce and tragedy began to touch their lives-the wives continued to rally together, forming bonds that would withstand the test of time, and they have stayed friends for over half a century. THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB tells the story of the women who stood beside some of the biggest heroes in American history.
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (June 3, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 145550324X
ISBN-13: 978-1455503247
Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 1 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1,112 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #72,369 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #109 in Books > History > Military > Aviation #307 in Books > History > World > Women in History #605 in Books > History > Historical Study & Educational Resources
I was looking forward to this book -- it's an original topic, a slice of the 1960s that hasn't been done to death. I enjoyed the first chapters, about the Mercury astronauts and their wives, but mostly I found the book disjointed and unsatisfying.Lily Koppel never seemed to settle on a voice for the book, so that parts of it came across with a wink-wink attitude, such as the way she referred to the women as "astrowives" and the children as "astrokids," and went into great detail about clothes and hair and jewelry as well as various Astro-spats between wives. Other times, the book seemed surreal, as in a description of a get-together after the Apollo 1 tragedy, which described astronauts' widows and families consoling each other and "watching a NASA man perform handstands." There's no further explanation, so we're left with that odd image that seems as if it belongs in a David Lynch movie.The book covered the families of all the astronauts from the Mercury Program beginning in 1958 to Gemini to Apollo until its end in 1972. This was about fifty families, which was too many for me to keep straight.Then there were the factual errors. Simple mistakes such as "Senator" Nixon and Khrushchev at the 1959 Kitchen Debate (Nixon was Vice President and had been since 1953), and that Eugene McCarthy beat Lyndon Johnson in the 1968 New Hampshire Democratic primary (Johnson won but was alarmed by how close McCarthy came.) An astronaut wife wears a pair of seventy dollar heels in 1959. (A little internet research finds that Marilyn Monroe paid an extravagant $39.95 for a pair of Ferragamo heels in 1959, so it's unlikely a Navy wife is wearing shoes nearly twice that expensive.
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