posted 02-12-2019 09:44 AM               

Spaceflight historian and creator of YouTube's "Vintage Space" Amy Shira Teitel tells the riveting story of the female pilots who each dreamed of being the first American woman in space.

A book that will appeal to readers of Fly Girls and The Astronaut Wives' Club, Fighting for Space is the mostly-unknown tale of Jackie Cochran and Jerrie Cobb — two accomplished aviatrixes, one generation apart, who each dreamed of being the first woman in space, but along the way battled their egos, their expectations, and ultimately the patriarchal society that stood between them and the stars.

Fighting for Space is a dual biography of these fascinating and fearless women, using their stories as guides through the changing social, political, and technical landscape of the time.

• Hardcover: 432 pages
  
• Grand Central Publishing (February 18, 2020)
  
• ISBN-10: 1538716046
  
• ISBN-13: 978-1538716045

posted 09-24-2019 12:48 PM               

I am so thrilled to announce that my new book, "Fighting for Space," will be released on February 18, 2020, and it's already available for pre-order through all your favourite means to get books!

The "Mercury 13" might be a familiar name. Or perhaps you've heard of the FLATs, the First Lady Astronaut Trainees (Smithsonian Magazine). It's a story that has been popping up in the media with some regularity for decades, and while the individual narratives vary they all tell the same feminist epic: thirteen intrepid women have the right stuff to fly in space in the 1960s, but NASA keeps them grounded. It's sexism, plain and simple. These "spaceflight pioneers" (Forbes) were "astronaut candidates" (NBC) in a "secret NASA program" (UPI). They "trained for spaceflight" (Reuters) and "could have been Mercury astronauts" (Air&Space). These accounts invariably feature Jerrie Cobb as the heroine and a Disneyesque villain named Jacqueline Cochran who swoops down to thwart her should-be sisters before returning to her castle atop a rocky mountain to confer with her pet raven...

Presented as a dual biography of Jackie and Jerrie, "Fighting for Space" draws from thousands of pages of archival material including new discoveries of letters and other ephemera. The result is a narrative-driven new perspective of this fascinating story.

You can read more about the book and pre-order on my website.

posted 03-24-2020 06:42 PM               

Since events aren't happening for a while, I've decided to do a virtual book tour! Except that instead of giving the same talk in different locations I'll be covering different topics in the same place, namely on my YouTube channel.

For the next ten weeks, I'll be covering one topic per week: I'll post an article and quick intro video Monday, then do a livestream/Q&A Thursday at 1pm PDT with some readings. Come with questions or just relax and listen! They will be family-friendly for kids, too. (And by that I mean no overt cursing. We might talk about the time a dude was beheaded and tawdry affairs, but in proper language.)

Prospective schedule

• 3/26 - Why revisit the Mercury 13?
  
• 4/2 - Jackie Cochran and Amelia Earhart
  
• 4/9 - Jerrie Cobb and Jack and Mary Ford
  
• 4/16 - Bessie Pittman becoming Jackie Cochran
  
• 4/23 - Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics
  
• 4/30 - Astronaut Qualifications
  
• 5/7 - A trip into National Archives
  
• 5/14 - Details that didn't make it into the book
  
• 5/21 - Mercury Astronauts on the women
  
• 5/28 - Women Scientist Astronauts

Best place to go for updates is Twitter: I'm just AmyShiraTeitel over there.

This might evolve as we go, we might switch days, but let's start off see if this works in lieu of a book tour! First intro article will be up tomorrow with some guiding questions and things to think about. Hope to e-see you guys later this week!