$17.63 with 12 percent savings

List Price: $19.95

$3.98 delivery May 15 - 21. Details

Select delivery location

In Stock

$$17.63 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Mesilla Internet

Ships from

Mesilla Internet

Sold by

Mesilla Internet

Sold by

Mesilla Internet

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt. You may receive a partial or no refund on used, damaged or materially different returns.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

$6.38

Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less See less

FREE delivery May 15 - 16. Details

Or fastest delivery May 9 - 10. Details

Select delivery location

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$17.63 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Ships from and sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta.

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (30) from $6.38 & FREE Shipping

Follow the author

Bettyann Kevles

+ Follow

More books from this author

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space (Mit Press) Paperback – Illustrated, March 17, 2006

by Betty Ann Holtzmann Kevles (Author)

3.7 11 ratings

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$17.63","priceAmount":17.63,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"17","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"63","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"352IyjVl8GFTpqrwKXpzyRzSVsaaK16Jk9HPporVQV%2FF%2BVkbMYem7Xdrmp1J69XhOxobXhQQLs%2FbMHgeU2ufAM3VXaB2ZCONbUqKbnGE4vo6RM2FCb%2BbsIeHLIOsm%2BmNIVf8zbaNXHopUhNzPO9lnIV41RXg0zaN%2FBKRq0c19FnqnVUMqqXzbIU8UKDagHjc","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$6.38","priceAmount":6.38,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"6","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"38","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"352IyjVl8GFTpqrwKXpzyRzSVsaaK16J5s6KG18Vtd5DlQcFhny0YDHHksphajglMCrwqMbhv5Gr%2BcGtKmO176FPvM1mh3W2I%2F7J9HfrHNG6XtIKQ9Y3JNWByM8jXVCkouf5Yp5iJA6bMbH%2FUP7akzM4m2vqgopq5wma7xKGjvQ%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

The stories of the remarkable women who have bravely met two challenges: the risk of space travel and the struggle to succeed in a man's world.

Almost Heaven tells the stories of the remarkable women who have bravely met two challenges: the risk of space travel and the struggle to succeed in a man's world. From Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Sally Ride in 1983 to Kalpana Chawla and Lauren Clark on the last flight of the Columbia, these women made history. Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles brings the women of space to life in this fascinating book, describing what motivates them, the pioneers who paved the way for them, and how their presence in the astronaut corps changed NASA. Setting her story against the background of the Cold War and the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Kevles takes us from Cape Canaveral to Star City in Russia and back. She describes the years of rejection before women were allowed to train as astronauts in the U.S. space program and the problems that female cosmonauts encountered in the U.S.S.R.

Kevles talks to the first women chosen by NASA to be astronauts in 1978 and to many women who have followed them. These women, she shows, have not only broken down barriers to join the most exclusive men's club in the world--the space program--they have become players in the greatest adventure of our time, the human exploration of space. This paperback edition includes Kevles's thoughts on the 2005 Discovery mission and other recent developments in the space program as well as her reflections on the role of female astronauts today, and perhaps tomorrow.

Editorial Reviews

Review

From beginning to end, this book is riveting. Meticulously researched, the story of women's struggle to gain a place in space is framed by the historical context of Cold War competition and the American women's movement.... The story never slows or loses focus despite its scope and its many threads.

--Scientific American

Yale historian Kevles does a superb job of describing the challenges faced by female astronauts since the beginning of the space age and viewing those challenges in light of the changing status of women in society at large.... A fresh look at the U.S. attempt to explore space while reflecting on injustice at home.

--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles recently held the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, and now teaches in the Department of History at Yale University. Her works include Naked to the Bone: Meidical Imaging in the Twentieth Century.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ MIT Press; New Ed edition (March 17, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 280 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0262612135
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262612135
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.34 x 0.65 x 9.18 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,142,642 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,399 in Astrophysics & Space Science (Books)
- #6,475 in Scientist Biographies
- #7,371 in Aviation (Books)

Customer Reviews:
3.7 11 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Bettyann Kevles

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5

11 global ratings

2 star

0%

1 star

25%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Sally Ride

Wonderful book!

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2009

This book is awesome!..
I bought a used one but it looked like brand new!.. The book itself is amazing. wonderful stories about women not just in USA but in different areas, e.x. Russia. It really opened my eyes!
I recommend it!
Olivia

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2018

I enjoyed this work which can be read as a series of memoirs or as a collection of fascinating facts. The first women to reach space were cosmonauts, and the author was initially going to write just about American astronauts when she got the chance to reach the cosmonaut women records too. So we get a great view of how two differing societies treated women and gave them opportunities. According to several postings in Amazon reviews, there are errors of fact and spelling in the book. For this reason I am giving four stars instead of five.

NASA was only taking test pilots from the Air Force as astronauts, and the Air Force did not put women in that role. When pressed, NASA picked thirteen women to train, but never sent them anywhere. NASA seemed obsessed with toilets, periods and chaperones. Valentina Tereskova and Valentina Ponomareva took advantage of the simple fact that women are smaller and lighter.

Later NASA was able to expand roles to mission scientists and engineers, allowing room for women, as well as accepting pilots. Sally Ride was the first American woman in space. There was also pressure to train women of colour, plenty of whom worked at NASA, and make the astronauts more diverse.

By the end of the book we've read heartbreaking details about astronauts killed in shuttles; and seen that women have to work hard before entering training in early thirties, and wait for a mission, so if they drop out for a year to have a baby they may not get a chance to fly. Families - and pressure from husbands of astronauts - are part of the picture.

I especially liked Nichelle Nichols, actress who played Lieutenant Uhura, recalling that she saw no role models in real life for her fans. She went to NASA bases and advocated for training young women to go to space. One word that keeps reappearing through the book is inspired. I love all the photos. I also like that the 1965 Barbie doll was dressed as an astronaut, when the previous year she had been a flight attendant and her boyfriend Ken was the pilot.

And the first journalist in space was a Japanese man, Toyohiro Akiyama, sent to Mir on Soyuz when the Russians started taking paying guests to finance their space programme. The development of the different orbiting platforms and lengths of stay is explained. Well done all.

Index P.265 - 274. I counted 74 names which I could be sure were female, including some fictional ones.

I borrowed this book from the Royal Dublin Society Library. This is an unbiased review.

Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2003

This is an interesting book with a lot to say on the subject of women astronauts. On the whole, the events and the people involved in them are very well summarized, far better than many other books in fact. There are some wonderful little vignettes into how the 1978 women astronauts were integrated into the Texas social scene, which were very well observed. Pat Cowings, often overlooked as the first woman to undertake serious astronaut training directed by NASA (though she was never selected as an astronaut), gets her correct place in history at last. It also puts the FLAT medical tests in their correct place as a minor footnote in space history. It lists the womens' movement accomplishments and the changes they brought as interesting background, not allowing the politics to overtake the human story. The misreading of S. Christa McAuliffe's respected place in Concord's educational community hits a minor jarring note, but overall Holtzmann Kevles is a very accomplished writer, gets the facts straight and tells an interesting story very well.
Having said that, I really do wish that "friends of the author" would not make postings on these pages and pretend that the book is error-free. Wishing the mistakes weren't there does not make them disappear. The copy I picked up (from a book store, not a pre release copy) has all the errors that other reviewers have been kind enough to post here for the edification of the prospective purchaser (and, let's hope, the author and publisher). A simple read would find them. Just as examples, the misinformation on Lebedev is on page 87, the misdating of the first shuttle launch on page 94, the error about the last woman to Mir on page 163, spelling NASA's name wrong on page 252, Cobb's name wrong on page 253, Chaffee's name wrong on page 221, and the howling error of the wrong date of the Apollo 11 moon landing in the book's very first paragraph. I noticed another mistake also, on page 141 - Helen Sharman, like all other cosmonauts, was fitted into her space suit before her bus ride to the launch pad, not afterwards as Holtzmann Kevles believes.
I hope that the author's friends have the courage to tell her what needs correcting, and not continue to defend the indefensible. Fiction writing is allowed to play with events, and even history is open to interpretation. Holtzmann Kevles' theme, her message, is worthy and dead on. However getting basic names and dates correct (and they are mostly subjective errors of fact, not simple "typos" here ) in a history book is, I believe, essential. Save your money for a corrected second edition, assuming the publisher does the right thing.

39 people found this helpful

Helpful

Marion E. Gold

Defying gravity and prejudice...

Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2003

Just imagine what knowledge awaits us, what accomplishments are yet ahead, when peoples around the world finally set aside prejudices and bigotry, and welcome women into every aspect of the world's societies. In her book, "Composing a Life," Mary Catherine Bates aptly equates life with a work in progress, an improvisatory art in which each individual learns to combine familiar and unfamiliar components in response to new situations. This is true for men and women in all walks of life, but it is especially relevant for women in aeronautics. For not only are they taking their well-deserved places next to the brave men who fly combat missions and pilot space shuttles ?they are also redefining the roles of women in a world that still struggles with gender equality. Surely, if there is a heaven, women are equally welcome. (from Marion E. Gold, author of "Top Cops: Profiles of Women in Command")

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Follow the author

Image Unavailable

Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space (Mit Press) Paperback – Illustrated, March 17, 2006

Purchase options and add-ons

What do customers buy after viewing this item?

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Product details

Videos

About the author

Bettyann Kevles

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries