Anyone read the book ?

READ
THE
BOOK.

1. The book was OK, not a classic. I'm a baby boomer, so I was fed the propaganda that the astronauts were all devoted family men. It comes as a major disillusionment to find out that they were more like Captain Kirk, and of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, John Glenn was probably the only one who wasn't cheating on his wife. As idols will, they attracted groupies whom the astronauts called "Cape cookies," Cape as in Cape Canaveral.

2. It's been so many months since I read the book, I can't help you on what it said about Rene Carpenter, other than that she deliberately wore a different style dress than the other six wives in the cover photo. But having lived through those days, I remember my shock when Mrs. Carpenter filed for divorce from her husband. It makes more sense after reading the book and learning about the astronauts' penchant for fooling around with Cape cookies.

3. The time span of the book was the 1960s.

Agree that the book was OK. It seemed fairly well researched.
The best thing about it was reading the history of the times from the wives' perspectives. As has been noted, that was hardly, if ever, correctly done, especially back then.

I recommend it as a fairly interesting and fast read.

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I never went in for embroidery, just results.

I'm another that thought the book was okay, but rather superficial. I posted this review on my blog.

I became fascinated by the story of the astronauts' wives from the first time I saw The Right Stuff. Already living an uncertain life as the wives of test pilots who might or might not come home every night, spouses of "the Original Seven" were thrust in the limelight, fictionalized in "Life" magazines, and held their breath during each spaceflight. When HBO's Emmy Award winning miniseries From the Earth to the Moon aired, one of the twelve episodes was devoted to "The Original Wives Club," concentrating on the Mercury and Gemini astronauts' wives. So it was with anticipation that I grabbed this volume.

I needn't have bothered. Most of what is rehashed here was addressed either in The Right Stuff or "The Original Wives Club," and the whole book is written at a fourth-grade reading level worthy of "People" magazine. Koppel adopts a chatty, superficial style mixing biographical data with the pop culture references of the 1960s that might be okay for a gossip magazine, but is sadly lacking as a definitive profile of women who juggled frequently absent and often unfaithful husbands, home responsibilities, childcare, and a growing awareness of their own place in a world where opportunities besides marriage and childcare were opening daily. I did learn a few things here and there, like the fact that Trudy Cooper was a licensed pilot, but, sadly, there's not much else here for someone looking for a serious portrait of astronaut wives. Louise Shepard, Betty Grissom, etc. deserve better.

Yes, I've read it. It really fills out the wives side of things that was only somewhat dealt with in From the Earth to the Moon (both the series and the book). You really have to read the book to get the whole story on Rene Carpenter, because after Mercury she had a whole career in her own right as a political advocate, writer and public personality.

The book goes on up through the Gemini and Apollo programs and then follows some of the wives after that to see how their lives turned out, especially to detail the fact that almost all the marriages ended in divorce and why.