#22: Amy Shira Teitel, Fighting For Space

[kareila]

Subtitled "Two Pilots And Their Historic Battle For Female Spaceflight" (which was too long to fit in the subject field), this has to be considered the definitive biography of Jackie Cochran and Jerrie Cobb. Unlike the previous book I read on the subject, the entire first half of this book lingers over the two women's personal lives and feats of aviation, which I had planned to skim but turned out to be even more fascinating than their later efforts on behalf of women in space. I think it also did a creditable job of contextualizing Jackie's resistance to rushing women into the early space program, given her experience of failure with getting the military to take women pilots seriously during the second World War. Jerrie Cobb comes across here as an idealistic crusader who never saw eye to eye with Jackie's more pragmatic long-term approach. It's an engrossing story that I couldn't put down.