Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America's First Women in Space Program ( Gender Realtions in the American Experience Series) Book

This is a thorough and well-documented scholarly history of the unofficial program in 1961 that put 25 women through astronaut testing employing the same methods and facilities used for the Mercury Seven. Weitekamp does an excellent job of presenting the major personalities involved and establishing the wider social context for the program and its eventual demise. There are times when this story is heart-breaking; other times it's infuriating. Due to sexism and indifference, the U.S. lost some excellent astronaut candidates, especially Jerrie Cobb. She would have been a fine choice to be the first American woman in space. I can't help but wonder if Cobb could have been the very first woman in space if only NASA's leadership had been more forward-thinking. Weitekamp suggests several reasons for this resistance, but the one that seems most insidious was that the male-dominated system of the 1950s and 1960s simply could not imagine women as astronauts. Right Stuff, Wrong Sex is a great addition to the field of space history.