Stephanie Nolen heard a story about Jerrie Cobb and she couldn't let it go: Cobb, a world-record-setting pilot and a woman, was recruited in 1959 to take the astronaut tests. At the time, the United States was losing the space race. The Soviets had larger, more powerful rockets, and engineers at NASA thought women -- smaller and lighter -- might be the answer to their problems. Women were also thought to be more tolerant of isolation and pain.

Randy Lovelace, chair of NASA's Life Sciences Committee and the doctor who supervised the selection of NASA's Mercury astronauts, and Donald Flickinger, an air force brigadier general and pioneer in aviation medicine, came up with the plan for a woman-in-space program. They tested Jerrie Cobbb, and she excelled on the same battery of tests her male counterparts took. She endured time in an isolation tank and spun through powerful G-Forces. Lovelace recruited additional female pilots for the tests, and twelve performed exceptionally.

Stephanie Nolen tracked down all eleven of the surviving "Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees." From the FLATs, Nolen gets the firsthand story of those exciting early days of the space race. But the thrill was short-lived. The thirteen women who were thoght to be prime astronaut material were grounded in 1961 when the woman-in-space program was abruptly and mysteriously cancelled. Until they read this book, the FLATs never knew why. At a time when a woman in space was regarded as "ninety pounds of recreational equipment", in the words of a well-known space pioneer, it's not surprising to learn that opposition started at the top.