The Andersen Library Blog

Wally Funk’s Race for Space :
The Extraordinary Story of a Female Aviation Pioneer
by Sue Nelson
TL789.85.F86 N45 2018
New Arrivals Island, 2nd floor

It was easy to get swept away by the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing this summer. From Public Television productions to radio news stories and music playlists, there was plenty of celebration to catch. It was no wonder this audiobook seemed perfect for this summer’s vacation road trip. Wally Funk’s Race for Space tells the story of Wally Funk, one of the Mercury 13. These were thirteen women who secretly underwent the same rigorous physiological and psychological testing as the Mercury 7, the seven men selected just a few years earlier by NASA 1959 for Project Mercury, the first human spaceflight program in the United States. Despite a lack of support for women astronaut trainees through the 1960’s, Wally Funk continued her pursuit of her dream to pilot in space. She was the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, the first female civilian flight instructor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and the first female Federal Aviation Agency inspector.

Borrow the print version of this title through UW Request, or check out Andersen Library’s copy of  The Mercury 13 : the untold story of thirteen American women and the dream of space flight, by Martha Ackmann.

Thomas Paine and the Dangerous Word
by Sarah Jane Marsh

New Arrivals Island, 320 Mar

As a longtime American history buff, I still am consistently dismayed by how little I know about many historical personages, and Thomas Paine ranked among them. This very well-documented and engagingly-written children’s book helped me to remedy that in a quick read. For example, I didn’t know that the Englishman arrived in America (deathly sick from typhus) only about six months before the battles of Lexington and Concord that started the Revolutionary War. He published the pamphlet anonymously at first, due to the inflammatory nature of the word “Independence” at a time when most of the public were still seeking reconciliation with Britain, and due to the controversy the first printing of 1000 copies sold out in just 11 days. As the author tells us in an afterward, Adams and other leaders at the time all credited Paine’s pen with enlivening peoples’ spirits to accept the revolution more than any other writer at the time; and Paine’s words have still been used by modern presidents and leaders such as Barack Obama and John Kerry.

I really appreciated how the (first-time!) author used so many of Thomas Paine’s own powerful words in both her text as well as some of the illustrator’s lively illustrations – the words seem to flow vibrantly off the page. It’s easy to see how his Common Sense pamphlet became, proportional to the population at the time, the most widely read best-seller in American history! (according to biographer Harvey Kaye)

If you’re curious, you can read the text of Common Sense online.