Gender and the Race for Space

Chronicles the history of early spaceflight and asks how American gender culture shaped the public image of the American astronaut and spaceflight technology during some of the tensest years of the Cold War era.

This book argues that the American astronaut image was informed by early Cold War ideals of masculinity that helped mold a distinctly American (anti-communist) masculinity, which appeared — on the surface anyway — to resolve not only an American “crisis of masculinity” but helped win the Cold War on an ideological and popular level.