I started reading this book because Caltech had a new alumni book club starting up, and this was the first book to be discussed. My timing in the reading, however, wasn't so great. I was all SQUEEEEEEEE about reading this book, and placed a hold on the book from the library. The book club started on February 22nd, my loan was due on February 24th. Which is to say, I read the book on the 23rd. As I do.

This book is about the math women at what would become, and is, Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. The people who computed. The computers.

Of this story, of their tales, I have mixed feelings.

The strongest feeling I have is of anger that smart, well-educated, ambitious women can't be engineers because, and only because, they are women. "Let me do all these amazing calculations, but I'm not allowed to design these things, or if I can contribute, my contributions aren't even a footnote in history." Every part of the book about this, about the history of this, is rage-inducing.

A close second to this feeling is appreciation. That I would go to college was never a question, of course I would. The question was always, "Which one?" That I was able to go to Caltech is to me these days, somewhat stunning. At the time, my thought was "of course," but that's the arrogance of youth and my ignorance of the world. Probably a good thing on the latter, not so much on the former, because it leads to the third feeling.

Sadness. Sadness that this rich history was there, that these women had blazed the path I so obliviously walked. I wish this book had existed when I was at Tech. I might have appreciated where I was an the opportunities in front of me more.

Or maybe not. Arrogance of youth and all.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The girlie parts, however, were REALLY CONFUSING TO ME. So much so, I had to write notes down about them as I read. My first note was about all the fashion stuff. It bugged me. Is this a book about the girls or the rockets or what? I wanted the history of the rockets. And THIS, ladies and gentleman, is a defining feature of Kitt. And one of the reasons I ended up at Tech, and not, say, Pomona.

I found much of the random details strange. The fireworks fire was weird. At one point, we hear about the chocolate shake and croissant one of the "girls" had for lunch. Because you remember that detail for a specific day? Did the woman keep a food journal, and have it tucked away in case she was interviewed 40 years later about that day and could tell the author exactly what she had for lunch that day of that one event? Those details pulled me out of the narration a bit.

That said, this was a fun read. I am glad this book exists. I am glad these women were able to use their intelligence, interests, and education; that they were able to walk the path, even if they couldn't soar in the skies. This book is worth reading.

It seemed incredible that in the midst of her crumbling existence, the world kept spinning and people went on with their daily lives.
Location 669

I understand this. The hardest part about death is that life keeps going.

JPL was used to hard-won success born from repeated failure.
Location 755

It didn’t feel like a job; it was more like being part of a secret society.
Location 820

One of the features of the teams I like to build and be on is this element, that you are part of a high-functioning team working towards a common goal, without ego.

Careers were rarely a topic of discussion among the women. Their importance was seen as marginal in comparison to their social lives.
Location 901

See? Rage-inducing.

They couldn’t help but feel that if they were using their own rocket, they would have better luck with it, or would at least be in control of their failures.
Location 2045

Employers argued that too many women vanished after taking a leave. Instead, she would use her saved vacation time and sick leave to be home with the baby. When those ran out, she’d come back to the lab.
Location 2071

F'ing short-sided asshats. If you'd provide child-care and flexible hours, HEY, they would stay. See above, secret society.

The engineers viewed the IBMs with suspicion, while the women embraced the new technology, largely because of their hands-on experience in using the machines. The world of programming kept drawing them in, expanding in both complexity and scope.
Location 2147

Yep. Why did we ever relinguish control over this amazing technology?

Janet Davis was about to leave too. Fulfilling Dr. Gates’s prophecy, she was eight months pregnant and knew she would have to quit soon. She hid the pregnancy as best she could, wanting to work right up to the end.
Location 2233

When a person enjoys what she does, she'll endure a lot to keep doing it.

As Carl Sagan said, “Observation: I can’t see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs.”
Location 2238

When the news anchor announced that Kennedy was dead, they held one another, in shock and sobbing. They knew that neither the country nor the fledgling space program they belonged to would ever be the same.
Location 2336

Debugging a program at JPL in the 1960s simply meant talking through the problems. Margie would sit with Barbara, and they would run through the programs one command at a time.

Each equation, each string of text, was thought through logically. As Margie described the program aloud step-by-step she would usually come across the error herself. Even if she didn’t catch it, her friend Barbara was there listening and would be sure to spot it. But while
Location 2563

So, rubber ducky debugging? This process still exists, btw.

Meanwhile, a manufacturing flaw meant that structural panels began to fall off the lunar module adapter.
Location 2575

Highlight(yellow

Sylvia had always loved to travel. Even as a child she felt the lure of leaving familiar places.
Location 2588

Returning to JPL and her friends, she was thankful to have no feelings of guilt at leaving her children. Her psychologist had told her this was a medical necessity, and it also helped that so many of her colleagues were working mothers.
Location 2646

When Margie struggled with some parts of the program, she did what she had always done—asked the other women. She loved having her friends to rely on.
Location 2741

O. M. G. What is this craziness? An environment where YOU CAN ASK FOR HELP? Where you aren't shamed because you're human? What the f, people, can we have one of these f'ing everywhere please?

Helen enjoyed being a mentor to the women in her group and wanted more for them, so she came up with a simple plan. She would find intelligent women and get them in the door by hiring them as programmers. Then she would encourage them to get advanced degrees in engineering. While they went to night school, she’d teach them to succeed within the framework of JPL.
Location 2753

And this is how you keep women in STEM.

Between their aptitude and her guidance, a generation of female engineers would emerge in the lab.
Location 2755

Muller was a complainer. He whined that the women monopolized Cora, the IBM 1620.
Location 2788

Asshattery knows no gender, btw.

Unfortunately for Muller, the women had priority on Cora since they were responsible for 90 percent of the lab’s computer programming. The men were just beginning to dip their toes into the technology, and they lagged behind their female colleagues.
Location 2790

Writing the program was so much fun that Sylvia could hardly call it work. She came into the lab each morning excited to get started.
Location 2823

Sylvia’s programming made sure the ship swung in line with the movement of the planets it passed, so that instead of using fuel, it would simply be thrown from one planet’s gravitational field to the next. Each step of the elegant dance was carefully choreographed.
Location 2828

When Macie hired new women she had often told them, “In this job you need to look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog.” In some ways, her advice still rang true.
Location 3090

"In some ways" I eyerolled here. In pretty much all ways, unfortunately.

While it was a mild day in Pasadena, in Florida the weather was unusually cold. However, after six delays, everyone was eager for the launch to go forward.
Location 3141

This whole incident is rage inducing, too, by the way.

After the craft had spent five years in storage, no one had thought to check the lubrication and coating on the antenna’s rib apparatus.
Location 3253

No one had thought...

“They’re always focused on the control room at JPL. The people really doing the work don’t get on TV,” she remarks.
Location 3476

In 2008, the fiftieth anniversary of her starting at the lab, JPL changed the rules and dictated that all engineers were required to hold advanced degrees. Because Sue never finished college, they took away her salaried position and switched her to an hourly rate. However, once administrators saw how much overtime she was getting, they made an exception and switched her back.
Location 3479

Dying laughing here.

Finally, a book I know exactly from where I have a recommendation, even if I can't find the exact moment Patrick recommended it. I placed a hold on the book from the library, and had three days to read it before I needed to return it, as the other books I was reading needed finishing first.

And so, from start to finish, less than 24 hours. That in and of itself is an indication that it is an engaging book.

The book has the quirk of the Observer character, the mentioning of which is a non-spoiler about the book, as it shows up in the first ten pages or so. I guess in the perspective of things (first person, third person, third person omniscient, and such), the explicit Observer isn't unusual, but being called out and personified is puzzling. I wanted something to happen with the Observer, some explanation beyond a vehicle for explaining different location and context switching.

I was also weirded out by the father's constant male references to his female family, "dude," "man," and the like. Don't call a woman "Dude."

It was a fun, fast read.

In an act of evident ecstatic abandon, the woman turns a slow circle in the living room, then strips off her clothes. Does the man appear reluctant at first? Alarmed, even? Never mind. He is soon naked as well, and they make love pressed against one of the freshly painted plaster walls. With this act, their faces and bodies seem to assert, we hereby claim this house as ours.
Page 19

...and if a day arrives when the idea of removing all your clothes in someone else’s presence does not horrify her, she thinks that she will not feel compelled to limit herself to one lover.
Page 25

There is also a spiral kitchen staircase with tiny steps you can’t even fit your entire foot onto, and Irina habitually uses it instead of the main one because it is weird.
Page 26

I understand doing things because they are weird.

She is discovering that, with a man’s name, she does not get talked to like the twelve-year-old girl she actually is. She just gets talked to.
Page 36

Which I love. I try very hard to do this, having learned years ago with Kim Wasson's kid. Don't. Talk. Down.

Why? Is this irrational? Is she just being moody? From inside the emotion, it’s impossible to tell.
Page 37

When potential customers walk in, see the crowd, frown, and march back out, Eleanor feels responsible. She wants to leave now in order to accommodate what she perceives as other people’s more pressing needs. But she has identified this quality in herself as a personality flaw, and she doesn’t wish to pass it on to her daughter. So she pretends she belongs here and deserves this table.
Page 43

I understand this need. I often consider it as "thinking wholistically" when really it becomes the subjugation of the self.

Irina lets out a noisy sigh and theatrically slams her book shut. She says, “I don’t think I’m good at reading.”

“That’s silly,” Eleanor replies, with a reflexive strenuousness that unpleasantly reminds her, every time, of her own mother. “You’re a great reader.”

“I start reading a paragraph and then something reminds me of something and by the time I get to the end I realize that I’ve been thinking of the thing in my head and not the thing I just read, and I have to start over!”
Page 47

Her instinct is to reassure, but the truth is that she agrees with Irina, she feels the same way about books: about everything, really. Your favorite things are never good enough. They’re idealized by nature; their favoriteness is derived from Platonic forms, perfect realizations that existed only once, usually the first time, if at all. No book, no meal, no sunny day ever equals the one in your head.
Page 48

Never.

He took two steps and gathered her into his arms. The feeling was extraordinary: like being picked up by a warm gust and deposited on some sunny, grassy hilltop.
Page 51

She figured one of these days the scans wouldn’t be clean anymore. And she did not want that day to come.
Page 52

She loves Karl, but her love never wrung her heart out or made her feel like she would die if it weren’t reciprocated. Of course, that kind of love doesn’t last—just read one of her dumb books—but maybe this kind doesn’t, either.
Page 60

She is aware that all of the things about him that presently vex her—his intensity, amorousness, and imperturbability—are the very things that attracted her to him in the first place.
Page 60

But Irina has already hitched the guitar up onto her shoulder and is pushing her way out the door and into the overcast and mildly stinky fall day. She feels bad for letting the real world seize and dispirit her so quickly.
Page 101

She is going to cry! She is looking forward to this aspect of childhood being over—this thing where you can’t control your emotions and they aren’t even about the things you really care about.
Page 105

The other understanding in her family, usually only spoken under the influence of drink, was that the over-recommended full mastectomy was an instrument of patriarchal domination, a means of controlling the sexual power of women. That in fact breast cancer itself was the world’s response to its poisoning by masculine striving. Men wanted to blame the breasts for getting sick, instead of themselves for polluting them. The full mastectomy was a gendered act of violence, a cowardly expression of projected self-disgust.
Page 157

“I’m so bored.”

“That’s your problem.” It is a philosophical tenet of their family that boredom is an ailment of a lazy mind and not the result of a lack of provided stimulation. It is the unsavory byproduct of bourgeois society.
Page 159

After a moment, Irina says, surprising herself, “Is this what life is going to be like now?”

It is into the chalice of his cupped hands that he mumbles the words “I sure as fuck hope not, dude.”
Page 190

Perhaps it can, in fact, influence events and objects: but how? And what actions might result in which outcomes? The Observer understands this as a problem of equal import and difficulty for the humans: the unpredictability of cause and effect.
Page 194

None of it matters—the coincidences, the connections. Things look connected because everything is connected in a place like Broken River. That’s why people want to leave small towns. Everything reminds them of some stupid shit they did or that was done to them. These people aren’t part of some grand conspiracy. They’re just some fucking losers living in a shit town, like pretty much everybody else on earth.
Page 197

Those are her thoughts. But she keeps them to herself, and Craig goes on talking, as men do.
Page 208

She can imagine how she must look to him right now—fatigued, depleted, disagreeable. Desperate. She doesn’t want to be this way, and neither does he. But here they are.
Page 211

She isn’t sure why she cares. Eleanor does not want to be the kind of person who can become unhinged by jealousy, never imagined that she could be. But maybe when somebody is ready, any available stimulus will do to effect the unhinging.
Page 213

But reading a book, man, that was work. Hours and hours, sitting in a chair or lying in bed, the eyeballs darting back and forth, line after line after line. It would have been an insane mental and physical endurance test.
Page 222

This. Is. Not. Me.

Reading is a joy.

Now, though, the excitement of midnight was gone. It just felt lonely here, lying in bed, being awake for no reason when the rest of world was asleep.
Page 227

“I had these ideas!” she cried; it was late and Father was out in the studio and Mother seemed uncharacteristically happy and relaxed there in her office, with a glass of wine. “And now I don’t like them anymore!”

“That’s because your book grew up while you were writing it.”

“But what do I do?” Irina asked, drawing out the ooooo in dramatic fashion.

“You fix it in the rewrites.”

“How long does that take?”

“Longer than the writing part, usually,” Mother said. “For me.”

Irina whispered, “But I worked so hard.”

“You needed to work hard, to get to the good ideas. The old ideas weren’t bad, they just weren’t what the book wanted to be. It’s okay to write a rough draft. That’s why they’re called that.”
Page 228

“If you’re going to be a writer,” Mother replied, “you’ll learn. Because the thing is, all of the stories we tell ourselves are wrong. All of them.”
Page 229

People come and go and do things impulsively, and they hurt each other and themselves. The outside world doesn’t understand. Do you get that?”
Page 233

“Life is very messy,” Rachel said, “and sometimes it is lonely and painful, but sometimes it is exciting and beautiful. You’re in a lonely part.”
Page 233

It is not necessary to be the way I’ve been, she thinks, as the nurses and doctors swarm and confer, as they ask her questions she hasn’t the slightest idea how to answer. I can be different.
Page 251

I can be different.

Over and over they come together, and if they fail to derive pleasure from these encounters, they find satisfaction in suffering. They are more attached, perhaps, to their suffering than to their pleasure. This stands in direct contradiction to their stated goals, which are those of comity, happiness, calm. But it is pain that gives their lives meaning.
Page 264

The beauty of Craig was that he appreciated everything that happened as it was happening and never betrayed any disappointment when it ended, whether it was a good meal or a professional relationship with one of his writers or half an hour in bed with a woman half his age.
Page 269

But it has understood for some time the folly of wishing to soothe the humans; they are built to feel, and there are feelings they crave, and no amount of information can suppress the emotions they torment themselves with.
Page 270

I wish I recalled where this book was recommended to me. I don't recall. Likely Tim Ferris, seems like something he'd be into, a shortcut to realizing human potential. I don't mean that in a bad way.

The fundamental theme in this book is that we are all pretty much attempting some sort of mind-alternation. The objective of the mind-alternation can be achievement or escape, depending on the person and the circumstances. And the "we" is pretty much all living, mobile creatures ("mobile" only because we don't have any meaningful way to communicate with the non-mobile living creatures).

The mind-alternation is an alternate state of consciousness where we are connected. And in the connection are we whole.

I really liked the writing in the book. I loved the idea of the book, that we can achieve more with less, even as I cringed at the points where my mind screamed, "But they didn't EARN that, they didn't suffer!" Is that really any different than the students in my classes being frustrated at my blowing the grade curve, again in elementary school, before I was lumped with the people who enjoyed learning? I don't think so, but the difference is that I recognize that "that's not fair" attitude, and accept that while we might be (on paper) equal under the law, we are most definitely not equal.

I read this book quickly. I recommended it to several people before I had even finished it. While achievement is important to me, it might not be to other people, so I'm not sure it was actually received with the enthusiasm I had for it. I strongly recommend this book, though I do wish it had more of the how (besides taking LSD).

Plato described ecstasis as an altered state where our normal waking consciousness vanishes completely, replaced by an intense euphoria and a powerful connection to a greater intelligence.
Page 11

“Grit” is the term psychologists use to describe that mental toughness—a catch-all for passion, persistency, resiliency, and, to a certain extent, ability to suffer.
Page 13

But researchers now know that the center of that target actually correlates to changes in brain function—like brainwaves in the low-alpha, high-theta range—and this unlocks all kinds of new training options.
Page 24

Instead of following the breath (or chanting a mantra or puzzling out a koan), meditators can be hooked up to neurofeedback devices that steer the brain directly toward that alpha/ theta range. It’s a fairly straightforward adjustment to electrical activity, but it can accelerate learning, letting practitioners achieve in months what used to take years.
Page 25

By using the tanks to eliminate all distraction, entrain specific brainwaves, and regulate heart rate frequency, the SEALs are able to cut the
Page 27

time it takes to learn a foreign language from six months to six weeks. For a specialized unit
Page 27

Without all the badgering, we get a real sense of peace. “This peacefulness may result from the fact,” continues Leary, that “without self-talk to stir up negative emotions, the mystical experience is free of tension.” And with tension out of the way, we often discover a better version of ourselves, more confident and clear.
Page 38

The pale that Valentine ventured beyond, call it the Pale of the Church, is an age-old barrier for the spiritually curious. It’s a divide between those who believe that direct access to God should be moderated by a learned elite and those who believe direct access should be available to anyone at any time. Top-down versus bottom-up.
Page 54

They’re suffering from apophenia, “the tendency to be overwhelmed by meaningful coincidence,” and detecting patterns where others see none.
Page 203

“I care not a whit for a man’s religion,” Abraham Lincoln once quipped, “unless his dog is the better for it.”
Page 212

Namely, there’s no
Page 216

escaping the human condition. We’re born, we die, and figuring out the in between can be brutal. As Hemingway reminds us, 25 “the world breaks everyone.”
Page 216

“[Ecstasis] is absolutely ruthless and highly indifferent,” wrote John Lilly. “It teaches its lessons whether you like them or not.”
Page 217

It’s in our brokenness, not in spite of our brokenness, that we discover what’s possible.
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