Vivid. -The Guardian * Engrossing. -Booklist * Suspenseful meticulously observed
enlightening. -Margot Lee Shetterly #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Figures In
this account of America's first women astronauts Grush skillfully weaves a story that at its
heart is about desire: not a nation's desire to conquer space but the longing of six women to
reach heights that were forbidden to them (The New York Times). When NASA sent astronauts to
the moon in the 1960s and 1970s the agency excluded women from the corps arguing that only
military test pilots-a group then made up exclusively of men-had the right stuff. It was an era
in which women were steered away from jobs in science and deemed unqualified for space flight.
Eventually though NASA recognized its blunder and opened the application process to a wider
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. In The Six acclaimed journalist Loren Grush shows these brilliant and courageous
women enduring claustrophobic-and sometimes deeply 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 tools that made the space program run. One of the group
Judy Resnik sacrificed her life when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded at 46 000 feet.
Everyone knows of Sally Ride's history-making first space ride but each of the Six would make
their mark. A spirited group biography...it's hard not to feel awe for these women (The Wall
Street Journal).
