Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science - Brossura

Lord, M. G.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0802777392 ISBN 13: 9780802777393

Casa editrice: Walker & Co, 2006

Riassunto

Drawing on her own memories of growing up as the daughter of a rocket engineer in the late 1960s, the author of Forever Barbie describes her fascination with her father's work at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory while recalling her pain at her father's absence and her fascination with science and space exploration. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

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Product Description

M. G. Lord is an author and critic. Since 1995 she has been a regular contributor to "The New York Times Book Review" and "The New York Times" Arts & Leisure section. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including "ARTNews," "Vogue," "The Wall Street Journal," " The Los Angeles Times Book Review," and "The New Yorker." She lives in Los Angeles. During the late 1960s, while M. G. Lord was becoming a teenager in Southern California and her mother was dying of cancer, Lord's father--an archetypal, remote rocket engineer--disappeared into his work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, building the space probes of the Mariner Mars 69 mission. Thirty years later, Lord found herself reporting on the JPL, triggering childhood memories and a desire to revisit her past as a way of understanding the ethos of rocket science. "Astro Turf" is the result of her journey of discovery. Remembering her pain at her father's absence, yet intrigued by what he did, Lord captures him on the page as she recalls her own youthful, eccentric fascination with science and space exploration. Into her family's saga she weaves the story of the legendary JPL--examining the complexities of its cultural history, from its start in 1936 to the triumphant Mars landings in 2004. She illuminates its founder, Frank Malina, whose brilliance in rocketry was shadowed by a flirtation with communism, driving him from the country even as we welcomed Wernher von Braun and his Nazi colleagues. Lord's own love of science fiction becomes a lens through which she views a profound cultural shift in the male-dominated world of space. And in pursuing the cause of her father's absence she stumbles on a hidden guilt, understanding "the anguish his proud silence caused both him and me, and how rooted that silence was in the culture of engineering." As in her book "Forever Barbie," which demystified an icon of feminine culture, Lord brings her insight to bear on a bastion of American masculinity, opening o

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Walker & Co
• Data di pubblicazione: 2006
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0802777392
• ISBN 13: 9780802777393
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 259
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile