4.5
The story of the first 6 women admitted into NASA's astronaut training program and the process of interviews and tests they went through in being selected. However, at this time in our country's history, these women were not only forging a path that had never been done before, they had to face the stereotypes of women "just being housewives" and not warmly welcomed into higher education and work that had traditionally been for men only. These women showed determination, intelligence, curiosity, and sheer grit to face some overwhelming situations. I truly admire their determination and professionalism in their work.

I am always in awe of NASA and their program of selecting and training their astronauts, and sending them into space for exploration and learning more about our universe. I applaud them for intentionally seeking out women for their program.

My thanks to Net Galley and Scribner for an advanced copy of this e-book.

Really inspiring glimpse into America's first six female astronauts- not only were they trailblazers, but Lauren Grush outlines the adversity and challenges they faced in a male dominated industry. The book speaks to each of their courage and determination.

Great narrative nonfiction about the first women in the space program. As someone who loves space and was an aspiring astronaut in elementary school, I enjoyed learning about these women pioneers who broke through the glass ceiling to rise to the highest heights (literally!). What an inspiring story for girls today.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I thoroughly enjoyed this nonfiction account of the first six female astronauts. Well-written and fast moving, it read like nonfiction. Since I wasn’t entirely familiar with the careers of these women, there was also an element of suspense about each of their missions. This was a good, necessary story well worth the time spent reading it.

I loved The Six! It's a non-fiction about the first 6 female astronauts and I was hooked from the first pages.

I loved reading each of their stories and learning more about being selected to be the first female astronauts at NASA in 1978 as well as their personal lives, especially hearing about why they all wanted to be astronauts, especially from such a young age.

Prior to this I only really knew of Sally Ride but I'm glad I learned about Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon too. I'm so impressed by these remarkable women and their experiences at NASA with the the space shuttle program.

I love history non-fiction especially about amazing women and I highly recommend if you have any interest in history or space. This read more like a fictional book and I couldn't put it down.

Like most, I know bits and pieces about NASA and the various space programs. I enjoyed reading about the women pioneers and their challenges to over come the chauvinistic atmosphere. About half way through, there was a bit of repetition with a different backstory. Editing is definitely needed.

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy.

Very informative about the lives and experiences of the first six American women astronauts. I also learned about many NASA missions and flights in a time period ranging from the 1970s to the 1980s. Full of quotes from members of the Six. Well written and well researched.

Several elements in the book's narrative resulted in a low review, however; namely one of the women astronauts dating men and women. There was also some mild language.

Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to view this book before its publication date.

For particular reasons I was thrilled to received an ARC from #NetGalley and #Scribner yet the opinions expressed are truly my own. Selected in 1978 Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Kathy Sullivan, Anna Fisher, Rhea Seddon and Shannon Lucid were the first females to be selected by NASA to accepted into the astronaut program. A biography of each of them is the focus and from the extensive research by Loren Grush their thoughts that brought them to the program develops and is concluded in the Epilogue. Their life experiences are fascinating. At times I was overwhelmed by the techniques and scientific material but I feel that this is a book that deserves to be on the library shelves of schools. Enthusiastic space programs and biography readers will find this worthwhile.. In 1983, we had been transferred to Australia where I had the pleasure of meeting Rhea Seddon and her astronaut husband, Hoot, who were representing President Reagan on ANZAC Day in Sydney.

The Six by Loren Grush ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A big thank you to @netgalley and @scribnerbooks for the ARC. This one comes out September 12! 🎉

As far as narrative nonfiction reads, this one was pretty flawless. It used the facts in an engaging way that made it feel like a story. It was mostly linear. It felt like all the timelines got a little mixed together once the Six were at NASA, but that was to be expected as they were all there at the same time. It was respectful of the tragedy; it didn’t sensationalize it nor did it retraumatize.

I loved that the author paid attention to what made these women who they were as humans - as friends, students, mothers, wives, etc. The author captured them as people, and that made a big impact as I read through. Even though I knew they were about to be selected as astronauts, I was feeling feelings when I read about their calls from NASA. I also enjoyed how the author highlighted the outrageous questions these women faced from the press. (I recommend checking out Off With Her Head if you’re interested in learning more about how language has been used with women.)

Do yourself a favor and check out this book about trailblazing females and space exploration.

I loved this book. The author is great at giving us insight into what it was like to be one of these women, living a normal life, having a dream, going for it, waiting to see if it would happen. There are some technical parts, but at the end, especially the epilogue, I was crying. The emotion was so moving. I hope many, many people read this book.

Space terrifies me. The vastness of the universe, pushing the limits of the unknown, and the infinite possibilities of things that could go awry. Despite my fears, I decided to listen to THE SIX: The Untold Story of America’s First Astronauts and I’m so glad I did.

My prior knowledge about these women and their space missions was next to nothing. I was completely fascinated by their various backgrounds, training for space, and how their experience compared to their male counterparts. Ironically, my husband was reading ROCKET MEN at the same time which made for compelling space conversation. I promptly added that title to my TBR as well.

Even if space isn’t your thing, reading about these brainy & brave women just might be.

I thought this would be a better read than it was, to me. In 1986, I remember sitting in the floor of the school library at Stuttgart Middle School watching the Challenger lift of taking the first teacher into space. Then seconds after take-off it exploding. This book looks at the time before the Challenger disaster. It looks at the way NASA finally decided to recruit women astronauts in 1977. It focus on the Six that would ultimately become astronauts, with Judy (J.R.) beginning on that fateful Challenger flight. We all remember Sally Ride as the first American woman in Space.

This book was a very slow read. It picked up, for me, around the 1/2 way mark, but slowed back down. I think it just has so much information in it, that I got bogged down. I had brain overload. I wish Netgalley did 1/2 stars because that's what my rating would be, but since they don't, I upped it to a 4⭐ read.

Tentative Publishing Date:
September 12, 2023

Thanks to Netgalley and Scribner for the E-ARC book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

#netgalley
#scribner
#lorengrush
#thesix

A great biography on the life and times of the first six female astronauts and the trials they faced while attempting to get into space. A inspiring novel of triumph and I highly recommend this book>

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I'm always grateful to read a well-written historical account about something I knew nothing about! This was true with The Six, During the 60's, and '70s NASA excluded women from their space program arguing that only military test pilots—a group then made up exclusively of men—had the right stuff. This was a time in which women were steered away from STEM jobs and therefore deemed unqualified for space flight. Once this begin to change and NASA realized there was and could be more to space flight than being able to fly, they opened the application process to a broader array of hopefuls, regardless of race or gender. From a candidate pool of 8,000, six elite women were selected in 1978—Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon. These highly educated, highly motivated women courageously endured claustrophobic—and sometimes profoundly sexist—media attention, undergoing rigorous survival training, and preparing for years to take multi-million-dollar payloads into orbit. Together, the Six helped build the space program into what it is today.

It was many years after the inception of NASA and the space flight program that women were allowed to become astronauts. Though not all of these initial six women are household names today, they all worked to advance both space exploration and women's rights in their own ways.

It rather surprises me that I'm not very interested in space exploration - maybe because I think there's plenty here on Earth to occupy my attention. My mother, on the other hand, is a fanatic whose biggest goal in life is to one day make it to the moon and so I am kept abreast of any advancements in space exploration. However, I am interested in the people who actually made it up into orbit - the whys and hows of it - and so I was excited to read this book about the first six women accepted to NASA as astronauts.

The author devotes equal time to all six women, tracing them from childhood to show us what got them interested in becoming astronauts and how their skills and personalities led to them making it through the grueling selection process. We follow them through training, their missions in space and the advancements through the ranks of astronauts, ending with the tragic death of Judy Resnik and her colleagues in the Challenger disaster, and the investigation afterward. I enjoyed how the author did not show the women as a monolith and let us get to know them all on an individual level.

However, I did wish that the book went into more detail about the scientific aspects of what the women did on their flights to space. We go into their experiences and how the media and the public reacted to the novelty of women in space, but I would have liked to see more about the more routine aspects of their job as well. It also became tricky at times to keep track of the many people in the six's lives, especially their fellow astronauts, so I wished the cast of characters at the start of the book had included them as well.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Amazing history of the first six female astronauts in the US space program. I cried during the prologue and, knowing what was coming, at the end. In between, you'll read about each astronaut's background - standouts in education, sports and more - and the challenges they had to face as women in a completely male-dominated field. Should be required reading!

Thank you to @Scribner and #NetGalley for the digital ARC of #TheSix. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

While much has been written about NASA and the space program, it's almost always about the space race of the 1960s and the men who made it happen. The Six picks up where most of those stories leave off with a well-done account of the first female astronauts and their impact on the program and the world.

The author's passion for the topic and her journalistic skill is evident throughout the book. She strikes the perfect balance between the personal backstories of each subject and technical details of their assigned missions. Evan as a self-described "space nerd", I learned several details I wasn't aware of before.

A must read for all space nerds, women in male dominated fields and girls striving to break barriers.

United States Publication: September 12, 2023

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for this advanced reader's copy. In exchange, I am providing an honest review.

In 1978, NASA decided to allow women to enter into the space program. The newest astronaut training class for that year included America's first six women astronauts. Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon. Their names go down in history for their contributions to America's space exploration. While Sally was the first American woman to go into space, each of the women made significant contributions to the program and furthering STEM interests for girls and boys. Judy even gave her life as she was on the Challenger in 1986 when it exploded one minute after lift-off. Each of the six helped shape the NASA program into what it is today, paving the way for future women to take their places among its ranks.

Grush provides a succinct biography of each woman to bring her to present-day 1978 when she received the call and invitation to be one of the first women to join NASA's astronaut training program. Then Grush continues each woman's story after she joined NASA, sometimes combining it with the other women that made up the six, sometimes featuring just that woman herself - discussing her challenges and contributions to science and space exploration. It was a really interesting look into the six women who made American history in 1978. I am really grateful to have read it and know more about the intense focus, dedication, and academic/scientific acumen required to be an astronaut and to know more about these particular six women who sit in the halls of American history.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the advanced copy of this book. I have been following the space story since man initially landed on the moon in 1969. I've certainly read all about the pioneers and the men and women who have taken part in the many different aspects of space flight.

The six women profiled are Anna Fisher, Shannon Lucid, Rhea Seddon, Kathy Sullivan, Judy Resnick, and Sally Ride, It was interesting to read about the inner competition to be "the first woman" in space, similar to who would be the very first astronaut in space and the first to step onto the moon. It's obviously a very competitive pursuit for all involved.

I think this is an excellent book for young girls to read, to be inspired by these women, regardless of what field their interests may lie in.

When I was in 1st or 2nd grade, I pulled that classic kid move of being like, "Mom, I have a book report due tomorrow and I need to dress up like the person and I picked Sally Ride." This would've been not terribly long after Sally Ride became the first American woman to make it to space; her mission was in 1983 and this was somewhere in the 1984-1986 range, but clearly there were already children's biographies of Sally Ride to be read and be reported upon.

I've long been vaguely interested in the space program, possibly because I was one of those small children who knew that a teacher would be going into space...and who was then traumatized by the Challenger explosion. As an adult, that's manifested as mostly reading a bunch of books and watching a bunch of documentaries about the early days of the space program, the Mercury and Apollo astronauts. This was really my first exposure to the Space Shuttle program. (Maybe it was of less interesting because I remembered it?)

In the mid-70s, NASA started to recruit astronauts for a new program, where the spaceships would be reusable and big enough for people on board to conduct various experiments. This meant that instead of everyone on board having to be pilots, there could be mission specialists. They'd get training to work on the shuttles, but their primary roles would be elsewhere. And NASA knew that they had to make an effort to recruit women and minorities. Grush's book is about the six women in that first class of astronauts.

Grush does a great job in this book. She manages to describe both the women (and other astronauts) and the logistics of astronaut training and shuttle missions engagingly. I didn't really have much of an idea what astronauts actually did up on the shuttle (much like I'm not really sure what astronauts do today), but now I have a much better idea.

(The book ends with Challenger, which took the life of Judy Resnik, one of the Six, as well as other astronauts we'd met throughout the book, as well as Christa McAuliffe. I pinged those names immediately [though I can't name a single member of the lost Columbia crew]. Grush actually lays the groundwork early on, describing the design of the shuttles...including the O-rings. She includes the investigation into what happened; Sally Ride was on the committee. I thought her handling of the disaster was extremely well-done and completely heartbreaking.)

I don't know whether it's how things actually were or whether Grush was glossing over it, but for a lot of the book, things seemed a bit too hunky dory. The Six had to deal with a lot of media inquiries (one of my favorite bits was the day their astronaut class was introduced to the media and the Six would meet up in the bathroom to discuss strategies and compare notes), of course. Grush certainly mentions instances of sexism from NASA staff and other astronauts, but it's largely not delved into. Some of the Six dealt with it by ribbing the offenders back; others tried to shut it down or ignore it. The jokes and comments seemed to persist for quite some time and Grush does note them throughout the book, but something about the portrayal of it just seemed a bit off for me. She does do a good job pointing out things like NASA continuing--even into more recent missions--to not have spacesuits that fit women.

Grush does spend some time on the Six's romantic lives, including Sally's female and male partners. She doesn't dwell on any of it too much; at times I wondered if she should've gone into it a bit more, honestly. When the Six originally joined NASA, a bunch of media questions were about whether or not there would be romance between the male and female astronauts. And...there was. Anna's husband actually joined her as an astronaut, but at least two other of the Six married astronauts. Totally understandable, but was there ever any hesitation there? I wonder.

We do get some great moments. Like when Sally (Grush refers to people throughout the book by their first names, which I found interesting; her style at times was also a bit casual) was at a press conference just before her first launch, she said, "It's too bad that our society isn't further along and that this is such a big deal ... But I guess if the American public thinks that it's a big deal, then it's probably good that it's getting the coverage that it's getting. I think it's time we get away from that, and it's time people realized that women in this country can do any job they want to do."

I'm one of those little girls who knew from a young age that women could go into space, too. And it was thanks to these women. I enjoyed getting to know them better.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for providing an advance copy for an honest review!