The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight, by Martha Ackmann. When I first saw this book a couple years ago, I was curious. I’d never heard about a program for women astronauts. I ordered the book and added it to my TBR pile. Last week, I started it, and last weekend, I finished it.

First, I better clarify. The United States did NOT have a program for women astronauts in the early 1960s. The rolls of women fliers were scoured in search of women who might be able to pass the same tests the men took in competing for the Mercury program. Hundreds of female pilot’s records were screened, twenty-five were invited to test (independently of NASA but by the same people who performed the tests on the men competing for the Mercury program). Not everyone accepted the invitation, and of those who accepted, not everyone passed the tests.

The tests aren’t really what this book is about. Ms Ackmann did a wonderful job of capturing the sometimes cutthroat methods pioneers in any field will use to advance their cause. In this case, women happened to be the example, but I doubt the process is unique. Ms Ackmann captured the sometimes unpleasant process of the beginning of societal change.

I was fascinated to learn of women’s flying careers from before I was born and the early years of my life. These women set the stage for women after them to be able to participate more fully in previously male-dominated fields. Hopefully, that participation extended to other non-dominant members of society as well, because while NASA’s rationale for accepting only military test pilots with engineering degrees as astronaut candidates made sense from an expediency perspective, it didn’t necessarily pass the giggle test for ensuring the best candidates were screened and selected.

This book thoroughly debunks the myth that “the best qualified” are considered for a job when people meet the criteria when those criteria are clearly (whether intentionally or not) skewed to eliminate vast numbers of a population. The example of military test pilots as a criteria in a time when women were not permitted to be pilots, let alone test pilots in the military. When all military test pilots were white males, that criteria became questionable (especially when a female monkey was the first mammal to travel into space…but I digress). Astronauts were not going to be test pilots. They did have to exhibit a number of traits common to test pilots, but test pilots were not the only or necessarily the best source of those traits in the population.

If you want to learn more about pioneering women or how societal changes begin, don’t miss this book.