Books like Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt

Between the World and Me is a memoir‑essay in letter form, where Ta‑Nehisi Coates addresses his teenage son about the history, violence, and ongoing reality of being Black in America.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks follows the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black tobacco farmer whose cancer cells were taken in 1951 without her consent and later became the first immortal human cell line, HeLa, driving major scientific breakthroughs while raising questions of ethics, race, and medical exploitation.

Ishmael Beah’s memoir chronicles his harrowing journey from a nine‑year‑old rebel fighter in Sierra Leone’s civil war to a survivor rehabilitated by UNICEF and later a storyteller traveling the United States.

Walter Isaacson chronicles the minds that forged the digital age, from Ada Lovelace to Larry Page, showing how vision, collaboration, and engineering transformed abstract ideas into the computers, Internet, and technology we use today.

Hidden Figures tells the true story of four African‑American mathematicians—Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Christine Darden—who broke barriers at NASA’s Langley Research Center, proving that talent, not race or gender, powers scientific progress.

During World War I, women painted clock dials with radium, a glowing but toxic substance, leading to illness and a landmark workers’ rights struggle in America.

A biography of Srinivasa Ramanujan that traces his upbringing in India, his extraordinary mathematical achievements, and his collaboration with G. H. Hardy at Cambridge.

A chilling memoir detailing Solomon Northup's harrowing experience as a captive on a Louisiana plantation for twelve years, from 1841 to 1853.

Oliver Sacks’s memoir traces his restless journey from teenage motorcycle adventures to early neurology practice, revealing how his passions for motion and the mind shaped a remarkable career as a physician and writer.

During World War II, more than ten thousand U.S. women were recruited by the Army and Navy from towns and elite colleges to serve as codebreakers in Washington, whose efforts shortened the war and opened new career paths.

John Whiteside "Jack" Parsons, a pioneering rocket scientist and occultist, played a key role in WWII rocketry and the early U.S. space program while engaging in Thelemic rituals that influenced contemporaries like Heinlein, Bradbury and L. Ron Hubbard.

Mildred Kalish shares her childhood on an Iowa farm during the Great Depression, blending humor, family traditions, and practical lessons about farm life, recipes, and resilience.

A gripping, first‑hand chronicle of the 13‑hour Benghazi siege in 2012, detailing the courageous actions of six U.S. security operators at the State Department compound and CIA Annex.

Wernher von Braun: the German rocket pioneer who created the V‑2, defected to the U.S. under Project Paperclip, and later directed NASA’s Apollo launch‑vehicle program.

A July 1981 murder at a river triggers a decades‑long investigation, a family torn apart, and a determined detective committed to solving the cold case.

"Blending a fascinating personal history with dramatic historical events, this book brings long-overdue attention to a brilliant woman whose work proved essential for America's early space program. This is the extraordinary true story of America's first female rocket scientist. Told by her son, it describes Mary Sherman Morgan's crucial contribution to launching America's first satellite and the author's labyrinthine journey to uncover his mother's lost legacy--one buried deep under a lifetime of secrets political, technological, and personal. In 1938, a young German rocket enthusiast named Wernher von Braun had dreams of building a rocket that could fly him to the moon. In Ray, North Dakota, a young farm girl named Mary Sherman was attending high school. In an age when girls rarely dreamed of a career in science, Mary wanted to be a chemist. A decade later the dreams of these two disparate individuals would coalesce in ways neither could have imagined. World War II and the Cold War space race with the Russians changed the fates of both von Braun and Mary Sherman Morgan. When von Braun and other top engineers could not find a solution to the repeated failures that plagued the nascent US rocket program, North American Aviation, where Sherman Morgan then worked, was given the challenge. Recognizing her talent for chemistry, company management turned the assignment over to young Mary. In the end, America succeeded in launching rockets into space, but only because of the joint efforts of the brilliant farm girl from North Dakota and the famous German scientist. While von Braun went on to become a high-profile figure in NASA's manned space flight, Mary Sherman Morgan and her contributions fell into obscurity--until now."--

The Astronaut Wives Club follows the lives of the wives of NASA’s Mercury Seven astronauts as they navigate fame, social change, and personal trials while supporting one another during a historic era.

An insightful biography of Thomas Jefferson, placing him within America's history and exploring his legacy in the context of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the American Revolution.