The Astronaut Wives Club

A True Story

By Lily Koppel (Hardcover Book, 2013)

As America's Mercury Seven astronauts were launched on death-defying missions, television cameras focused on the brave smiles of their young wives. Overnight, these women were transformed from military spouses into American royalty. They had tea with Jackie Kennedy, appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and quickly grew into fashion icons.

Annie Glenn, with her picture-perfect marriage, was the envy of the other wives; platinum-blonde Rene Carpenter was proclaimed JFK's favorite; and licensed pilot Trudy Cooper arrived on base with a secret. Together with the other wives they formed the Astronaut Wives Club, meeting regularly to provide support and friendship. Many became next-door neighbors and helped to raise each other's children by day, while going to glam parties at night as the country raced to land a man on the Moon.

As their celebrity rose-and as divorce and tragic death began to touch their lives-they continued to rally together, and the wives have now been friends for more than fifty years. THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB tells the real story of the women who stood beside some of the biggest heroes in American history.

Visit www.theastronautwivesclub.com for more.

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- Format: Hardcover Book
- Price: $28.00 US/$31.00 CAN
- ISBN-13: 9781455503254
- On Sale Date: 06/11/2013
- Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
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Formats Available: Hardcover Book, Electronic Book, Audiobook, Audiobook, Hardcover Book
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Lily Koppel is the bestselling author of The Red Leather Diary. She has written for The New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Huffington Post, and Glamour.

THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB by Lily Koppel

Praise for THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB:

"The only thing more delicious than the idea for this book is its execution. Come, all you Mad Men lovers, you girl-bonding-opus fans, you amateur historians who've looked under rugs for unlikely heroines...The Astronaut Wives Club rockets us back to the innocence of a unified mid-century America's space race triumphalism and to an unselfconscious sisterhood-is-powerful in the bud-nice things to recall, and maybe take a tiny bit of heed from, in these more sophisticated but much more complicated times." (Sheila Weller, author of Girls Like Us).
"If you thought the only heroes in the history of NASA were its astronauts; if you thought the all-American family regularly seen in the pages of Life magazine was the full story of those astronauts' private lives; and if you've ever dreamed of supersonic romance, dinners at the Kennedy White House, through-the-roof beehives, a group of friends and neighbors going through this crazy time with you, and a celebrity hero husband who is the most admired man in the nation (yet, could die at any minute) ... then you're ready to sign up for Lily Koppel's thrilling, magical, nostalgic, and eye-opening Atlas rocket of a read, The Astronaut Wives Club." (Craig Nelson, bestselling author of Rocket Men and The Age of Radiance).
"The Astronaut Wives Club is a fun-loving romp about the devoted women behind NASA's herculean Moon Shot effort. Lily Koppel writes with humor, cunning, and integrity. I found her recounting of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs riveting. Highly recommend!" (Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and author of Cronkite).
"The Astronaut Wives Club is spectacular, both in its intimacy and its reach. Lily Koppel pulls out delicious behind the scenes details of the stresses, formalities, pleasures and travails of being the women behind the men on the moon." (Karen Abbott, bestselling author of American Rose and Sin in the Second City).
"[An] entertaining and quirky throwback...This is truly a great snapshot of the times." (Publishers Weekly (starred review)).
"Insightful social history with a light touch." (Kirkus).
Praise for The Red Leather Diary:

"Skillful reporting, fine prose and [an] excellent eye for period detail. . . . A story about not one but two lovable characters-and the city that brought them together." (Alana Newhouse, New York Times Book Review ).
"Florence's life reads like E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime in places, with all the famous paths crossed and situations experienced; while descriptions of city life recall Marjorie Hart's Summer at Tiffany. . . Together, Koppel and Florence take readers through a world dizzy with new ideas, rhythms and inventions." (Bookpage).
"[The Red Leather Diary] works as both a biography and a spellbinding glimpse into a vanished era." (Margaret Flanagan, Booklist ).
"In The Red Leather Diary, Lily Koppel finds an old journal in a Dumpster, gets lost in its rich take on 1930s New York and, improbably, tracks down the now-90-year-old woman whose life-real and imagined-fills its worn pages." (Reader's Digest (Editors' Choice)).