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M.G. Lord, author of “Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science,” discusses her latest tome, an account of the very human stories behind American planetary exploration and her father's immersion in his work at the Jet Propulsion Lab in the 1960s.
Lord’s book is about more than science and space. It is a daughter's journey to rediscover her father and understand the culture of space engineers.
In the late 1960s, Lord’s mother was dying of cancer. The teen’s father — a rocket engineer with a personality as distant as the stars— disappeared into his work at JPL, building the space probes of the Mariner Mars 69 mission.
Setting herself apart from the “Right Stuff” pack of historians, she recounts her own fascination with outer space and describes the pain caused by her father’s noticeable absence, ultimately realizing that her father had simply “embraced the values of his profession: work over family, masculine over feminine, repression over emotion.”
Lord also examines the complexities of JPL’s cultural history and shows how the aerospace industry of the 1950s and '60s sometimes turned the best minds of their generation into Nazi apologists, homophobes and other unapologetic humans.
The New York Times called “Astro Turf emotionally satisfying,” saying that the book “works well as a brief, clear history of a field and the lab that embodied it. It works even better as a piece of cultural criticism. Lord has a wonderful way of deploying words and images, seeing to the heart of what they mean ... Astro Turf works best of all, though, as a moving memoir of the difficult love between a daughter and father."
Lord also wrote “Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll” in which she examined the changing role of women by demystifying feminine culture against the backdrop of that uniquely American stereotype of womanhood known as Barbie.
Wearing the multiple hats of investigative reporter, author and social critic, Lord has also been a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The New York Times Arts & Leisure section since 1995. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including ARTNews, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times Book Review and The New Yorker. She has also been tapped as a member of the USC Scripter® Award selection committee.
Lord's books are available through the USC Pertusati Bookstore.
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