Non-fiction review: The Glass Universe, by Dava Sobel

It's happened again! Lost track of the days of the week, but there is a review for you today, and my clock says it's still Monday :)

Title: The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars
Author: Dava Sobel
Publication Info: Viking, 2016, 336 pages
Source: Library Digital Resources 

Publisher's Blurb:
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations made via telescope by their male counterparts each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but by the 1880s the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard amassed in this period—thanks in part to the early financial support of another woman, Mrs. Anna Draper, whose late husband pioneered the technique of stellar photography—enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight.

Their ranks included Williamina Fleming, a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid who went on to identify ten novae and more than three hundred variable stars, Annie Jump Cannon, who designed a stellar classification system that was adopted by astronomers the world over and is still in use, and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin, who in 1956 became the first ever woman professor of astronomy at Harvard—and Harvard’s first female department chair.

My Review:
Over the last couple of years, I have read a number of books about the contributions of women to significant scientific and mathematical accomplishments. The Rise of the Rocket Girls (the Jet Propulsion Lab), Hidden Figures (NASA), The Girls of Atomic City (the development of the atomic bomb), and Code Girls (WWII code breakers) have all worked hard to dispel the myth that women can't do math and science, and were never able to even try until very recently (well, that latter is true for the most part, especially depending on how you define 'recent'). Most, however, also show us a limited scope that the women were given for their intelligence and talent (Code Girls seems to be an exception, as the necessities of war led eventually to allowing the women to truly run things, as long as they didn't want equal standing with the men). 

Sobel's Glass Universe fits this category of book, but stands out: she highlights a rare case where women were early and genuinely granted the right to be scientists in their own rights. They were not without their (largely externally-imposed) limitations, of course. The first generation or two of female astronomers at the Harvard Observatory couldn't hold academic posts (unsurprising: they couldn't attend Harvard as students, so why would the institution grant them an official title?). And in general, they were passed over when awards were being handed out. Only a few asserted themselves to the extent of actually operating the telescopes, which at the time involved climbing up and down ladders to make manual adjustments (work generally considered too hard for women to do; we won't go into the irony that many women did similar and harder work, known as "housework," on a regular basis).

But Sobel also shows us a rare case of a leader in an institution who started out seeing women as a type of machine ("calculators," as those who did the complex calculations needed for many aspect of science were called in the years before the invention of the electronic calculator), but quickly came to recognize that they could and did make genuine discoveries. Edward Pickering was looking for careful, cheap workers (at that time women were never paid the same amount as men for equal work, as though, one of his employees pointed out, they didn't need to eat) in the late 1800s when he began to hire women. When they began to make discoveries on the glass photographic plates taken through the telescopes, he almost unbelievably recognized their abilities and allowed many of the women to work directly on the research, and.

The story is both heartening and frustrating--as usual, the women met with far more obstacles to success and advancement than the men did, but it was nice to see that Pickering recognized their work and insisted on having it published and shared under their names. It is also in some ways an awkward story to tell. There is no single subject (though for much of the book I felt like it was as much about Pickering as about the women he mentored), and for that reason I think it at times lacks a good forward momentum as a story. At other times I got lost in the details of the science, which were often obscure to me (I don't necessarily consider that a bad thing. I learned things, and laid the groundwork to understand more in the future). I will admit I gave the lengthy appendices a quick skimming, but if one were reading the paper form of the book I think you could make better use of them as you go (reading the ebook, I didn't even realize they were there until I got there, thus once again confirming my sense that an e-reader is just not as good for non-fiction as paper is).

My Recommendation:
Sobel is a good writer, and this was worth the effort I put into reading it. If you want to know that there was at least one scientist in the late 19th Century who recognized women as (almost) the intellectual equals of men, take a look.

Full Disclosure: I borrowed an electronic copy of The Glass Universe from my library, and received nothing from the author or the publisher in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."  

O: An Old-Fashioned Girl

 

I waffled a lot about this post, because I couldn't come up with an "O" book I wanted to review.  I finally decided to take a book that was already old when I read it as a kid, and look at it with a modern, critical (adult) eye to see how it held up.  So I reread Louise May Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Girl.  First, a quick synopsis:

 Polly Mason is the "old-fashioned girl" of the title, and the story narrates her relationship with her wealthy, and urban, friends the Shaws.  The story is divided into two parts, the first taking place when Polly and Fanny Shaw are about 14, and the second six years later when a now-adult Polly moves to the city to pursue a career as a music teacher.  The first portion was serialized in 1869, then expanded with the second portion and published as a book in 1870.

Now for some things I noticed.  Right off I was struck by the narrative voice.  Ms. Alcott is definitely present, not only occasionally addressing the reader directly, but also as a moral arbiter.  I am fairly certain this is the result of both common practice at the time and her desire, perhaps especially in this book (but on reflection probably in all her books), to model a world and set of behaviors she wishes were true.

And that voice, which is far too often preachy, leads us to the other thing I noticed right off, which is Alcott's conviction that the country or the village is superior in pretty much every way to the city.  Having read her biography, I find this interesting, because Alcott herself was clearly ambivalent.  Her father was 100% clear: healthy bodies and healthy minds were made through outdoor work and play far from the city.  Louisa seems to have tried very hard to go with that, but spent much of her life moving to and from the city, where she in fact found better inspiration for her writing.

To return to the Old Fashioned-Girl.  As I watch the story develop from the arrival of Polly Milton (a name I think not at all chosen at random) in the city, awed and prepared to admire all she sees, through her disillusionment and struggle to find a place for herself there, I think that modern children (okay, girls) will both enjoy Polly and find her too good.  The old-fashioned values will seem as strange and absurd in many ways as do the values of the fashionable girls (and I wonder if a child will see, as I do, the universality of the the absurdity of fashion!).  Thus the first half of the book.

The second half takes on, for me, a very different tone and purpose.  When Polly returns to the city as a working girl, she lands smack in the middle of one of Alcott's pet topics, class (for want of a better word).  While the young reader will see this section as part coming-of-age and part love story, I see it as an exploration of class, work, and the place of women in a society that Alcott found unacceptably repressive, not to mention grossly unfair.  In that, I think that the second half is a much more interesting book than the first, which reads much more as a sermon.

As a side note: I don't think any of Alcott's books fails to include the death of a loved parent, sibling or other important person.  She was not merely unafraid of tackling a subject that I think was more in-your-face in those days, when far more children died and far more lost parents, but I think determined to help make it less frightening and devastating.  Her books advocate for a fairly orthodox Christian belief in a deity and and afterlife, despite the rather less orthodox ideas her father explored.  I've never been sure if Alcott was a true believer or merely knew what had to be said to sell, but she does at times adopt the standard line and religious tone, which grates a bit on my modern agnostic sensibilities.

Finally, here's one bit that I can totally identify with:
. . . she had nothing to do but lounge and gossip, read novels, parade the streets, and dress; and before a week was gone, she was as heartily sick of all this, as a healthy person would be who attempted to live on confectionery.  (p. 35)
Kind of how I feel about many people's idea of vacation, lying on beaches or sitting around on cruise ships or the like.  I go nuts if I can't get exercise!  Alcott clearly was right about one thing, given what we know now about the value of exercise, for people of all ages and genders.

So do I think that Alcott's book stands up to the passage of time?  Yes, and no.  I think many modern children will find the language a little challenging (not that that's all bad!), and many will also find the tone preachy, though it's less clear to me that that stops children--the Berenstain Bears and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle both have great circ at the library, and to me they are both preachy as all-get-out.