The leader of the team that created the revolutionary Mars Sojourner rover chronicles her trailblazing career in space exploration and tells the fascinating, behind-the-scenes story of the celebrated Mars Pathfinder mission. Donna Shirley's 35-year career as an aerospace engineer reached a jubilant pinnacle in July 1997 when Sojourner--the solar-powered, self-guided, microwave-oven-sized rover--was seen exploring the Martian landscape in Pathfinder's spectacular images from the surface of the red planet. The event marked a milestone in space exploration--no vehicle had ever before roamed the surface of another planet. But for Donna Shirley, the manager of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Exploration Program who headed the mostly male team that designed and built Sojourner, it marked a triumph of another kind. Since her childhood in Oklahoma, Shirley had dreamed of traveling to Mars, and, through Pathfinder, she did just that. Managing Martians is Shirley's captivating memoir of a life and career spent reaching for the stars. From her seemingly outlandish aspiration at age ten to build aircraft, to abandoning high school Home Ec in favor of mechanical drawing, and, at sixteen, becoming a licensed pilot, Shirley defied expectations from the beginning. The only female engineering student in her college class, Shirley earned a degree in aerospace/mechanical engineering (while picking up a beauty contest title along the way) and, in 1966, began a career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that has spanned twenty-four different projects, including Mariner 10's trip to Venus and Mercury and a 1991 assignment as chief engineer of a $1.6 billion project to explore asteroids, a comet, and Saturn. Shirley's innovations in automation and robotics paved the way to her being named the first woman ever to manage a NASA program. For Pathfinder she assembled a brilliant band of upstarts (her fellow "Martians") and embarked on an improbable mission: to put an untethered, fully automated rover on Mars--at a fraction of the cost of any previous Mars project. In a vivid narrative, rich with anecdotes and thrilling turning points, Shirley recounts the intense battles she waged to defend her vision and the ingenuity and resourcefulness of her committed team. Her moment-by-cliffhanging-moment account of Pathfinder's landing and Sojourner's first tentative foray across the sands of Mars brilliantly captures the fulfillment of a lifelong dream as it heralds a brave new era of space exploration. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

What do you do if you are a tomboy daughter of the two most prominent families of Wynnewood, Okla., a small town in the middle of the U.S. in the middle of the 20th century? If you're Shirley, you set a course for Mars. Along the way, even if you smell of airplane glue instead of White Shoulders, you enter horse shows; and even if you are struggling academically and socially as the only female engineering student in your class at the University of Oklahoma, you enter and win the Miss Wynnewood contest. In this autobiography as unself-conscious as Shirley apparently is herself, the first woman to manage a NASA space flight program invites readers to follow her adventures, beginning with an awkward childhood, through four decades of failure and success, culminating not in an end but in a new beginning. "Where do you go after you've been to Mars?" her epilogue asks. "Where do you go after you've reached the pinnacle of what you imagined for yourself?" The answer is to pursue a new passion, to discover once again what you want to do when you grow up. "The question is only: Which passion do I want to pursue?" she declares. "Stay tuned." This book will certainly appeal to unconventional women, but it also belongs on the reading list of teenage nerds and adult former nerds, of anyone who has ever misstepped, of anyone who has ever been uncertain, of anyone of any age who still dreams of reaching beyond the horizon. 16 pages of bandw photos not seen by PW. $65,000 ad/promo; author tour. Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

YA-Morton traces the career of engineer Donna Shirley, the first woman to manage a major space mission. Shirley became fascinated with planetary exploration as a child; after 35 years in the field, she still retains her sense of wonder. Writing in a clear and breezy style, she describes her experience with a number of space-related projects. The greatest part of the book is devoted to the cliff-hanging development of "Sojourner Truth," the Pathfinder Mission's highly successful Mars rover. The author paints a vivid picture of the corporate culture of space exploration, the creativity and excitement of this work, and the colorful individuals who bring about the success or failure of these endeavors. Through wry anecdotes, the author shows how hostile the cultural environment of engineering and space science can be to women, and how she has used humor and ingenuity to deal with these challenges. YAs will see how space missions happen and what it's like to work on them. More generally, the book conveys a sense of the sorts of frustrations and rewards they are likely to encounter in any professional field.-Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VACopyright 1998 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Shirley became an instant celebrity last summer as the media interface for the Pathfinder landing on Mars. Having worked for 30 years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Shirley offers personal recollections of JPL's missions, but obviously the book's mass appeal is her personal story of a woman making it in a male-dominated profession. In her account, JPL itself seems equality-minded; Shirley parks the stories of sexism in her youth and education in Oklahoma and in her first jobs at a well-known aerospace company. At JPL, the climb up the ladder depended on designing flight hardware--a device that goes into and functions in space. For some while, Shirley faced the catch-22 of not being allowed to design hardware because she hadn't designed hardware, but at last she got the job of managing development of the Rover, the star gizmo of the Pathfinder mission. Her account of creating the six-wheeled robot, and subsequent promotion to manager of the entire Mars program, provides a lively insider's view of the enthusiasm animating the reenergized planetary program. (Reviewed June 1 & 15, 1998)0767902408Gilbert Taylor From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Both an autobiography of aerospace engineer Shirley and an intimate account of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Exploration Program, Managing Martians tells how the self-guided rover Sojourner was created and successfully landed on Mars. Shirley, who had wanted to travel to Mars ever since childhood, managed this project, and her story interweaves her dreams, frustrations, and personality with the fascinating account of how a team of mostly male engineers, highly individualistic and, for the most part, not enthusiastic about a female boss, pooled their energies and resourcefulness (in the face of an extremely limited budget) to design and build a robot that could function as a scientific instrument capable of roaming the planet. Aside from capturing the imagination of the US public, the Mars rover was able to test soil and rock measurements, travel more than 100 meters on the surface of Mars, and provide 550 images of the Martian landscape. What emerges is a valuable life of one of the first women engineers. The book is easy to read; there are 18 photographs and a short (ten books) list of suggestions for further reading. An account of an important event in the history of aerospace engineering. General readers; lower-division undergraduates. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.