The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story [Kindle Edition] Author: Lily Koppel | Language: English | ISBN:
B00A2C53M6 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Free download The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story Epub Free for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link 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 tragic death began to touch their lives--they continued to rally together, and 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 real story of the women who stood beside some of the biggest heroes in American history. Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story Epub Free
- File Size: 7404 KB
- Print Length: 288 pages
- Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (June 11, 2013)
- Sold by: Hachette Book Group
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00A2C53M6
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,658 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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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.
Behind the heroic images of astronauts presented to the world, the astronauts' wives were among the few who truly knew the men behind the impossibly perfect role models they represented to the public. Most of these women had been - as the author writes - "ordinary" housewives", spouses who were "living in drab housing on Navy and Air Force bases". Imagine going from that quiet life to being in the spotlight - having tea with Jackie Kennedy, appearing on the cover of Life magazine ( with the photos retouched, so that it seemed that they all wore the same ideal shade of red lipstick), hounded by photographers.
The Astronaut Wives Club superbly reveals the special challenges of being married to men who were part of the space program (officially announced in April of 1959, along with the introduction of the Mercury Seven astronauts). None of the wives had been trained to deal with sudden publicity. Before then, their husbands were often so busy that they rarely saw them. But after the Mercury Seven astronauts were introduced to the world, their wives now had photographers showing up on their doorsteps, people staring and pointing, and more.
Betty Grissom, wife of Gus Grissom, not only was totally unprepared for the onslaught of journalists but faced them with a raging fever of 102. Alan Shepard's wife, Louise, had to field questions about how long she'd been married, what her kids thought, and how often she worried about her husband dying. And Annie Glenn, wife of John Glenn, had to find a way to face the press while living with the challenge of her lifelong stutter.
They coped without the carefully rehearsed and prepped answers that are commonly prepared by media specialists today.
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