Love and War Series, Book 3 Antibody / R.A. Steffan / 246 pages

Vithii military cyborgs never go rogue, that's the official line that the Regime gives. How could they, when their emotion centers have been ripped out and replaced with tech? Cyborgs do 3 things: follow orders, destroy whatever target you point them at, and walk calmly into vaporization chambers when it's time to be decommissioned. PX-12 known to his friends as Pax, only performed 2 of those functions during his stint in the military. D-8, one of his unit-siblings, performed all 3. So when Pax receives D-8's distress beacon 7 years after Pax saw him destroyed, there is either something wrong with his systems or the Regime is recycling the minds of decommissioned cyborgs, turning them into weapons even more horrific than they were before. To stop it, Pax and the other members of Shadow Wing, the rogue group fighting against the Regime, will need the help of telepathic Vitharan ambassador and part time spy, Nahleene Veila'ana, the woman who once helped Ryder and Temple escape a Vithii Regime controlled prison and whose motivations are questionable. Narrated by Gwendolyn Druyor 7h 48min.

Love and War Series, Book 2 Antigen / R.A. Steffan / 239 pages

Ryder is a member of Hunter Tarthasian’s rogue group of alien Vithii, Shadow Wing,  that fight against the tyranny of the Vithii Regime, and was once a prestigious doctor until she performed an illegal experiment to try to save a patient’s life and had her credentials revoked.  When Skye escaped with the antidote to a deadly bio weapon that could only affect humans, her brother acted as a decoy to throw off the Regime and was captured and is now a political prisoner held by the Regime to try to use against Skye.  Once Ryder and Shadow Wing created the antidote they broke into the water supply plant to put it into the water so they could get it out to everyone on the planet before the Regime could use the Bio weapon. Now Shadow Wing are searching for Temple, Skye’s brother, to get some recon on the Vithii prison he is being held in they send Ryder in under a false identity as a doctor at the prison, but when someone from her past recognizes her, the plan to get Temple out goes up in flames.  Ryder is now also a prisoner along with Temple, and Shadow Wing have to save them both. Narrated by Gwendolyn Druyor 7h 19min

Love and War Series, Book 1 Antidote / R.A. Steffan / 256 pages

Skye Chantrell has just escaped from a war zone and crash landed on a remote lunar outpost and her survival depends on a dangerous alien Vithii fugitive, Hunter Tarthasian.  Skye’s father was forced by the Regime to create a deadly bio weapon that targets humans but he also created an antidote to it, stole it, and died helping her escape. Now she has to get back to the capital before the bio weapon that targets humans is released and she has to figure out if she can trust Hunter and his rogue group of alien Vithii.   Narrated by Gwendolyn Druyor 7h 40min.

Hidden Figures/ Margot Lee Shetterly/ 346 pages

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shettetly documents the lives of several black computers at NACA and later NASA Langley.   Located in segregated Virginia,  a job at Langley was one of few options open to well educated black women in the 1940's and beyond.   It was hard for any woman to break into the world of engineering, but even harder for a black woman.  Shetterly does a good job of exposing the difficulties for blacks in the south seeking either an education or a well paying job.  Forced to attended segregated colleges, the women often received excellent instruction, an off shoot of segregation.  Black men could attend northern colleges such as Harvard, but would never be able to teach there.  As a result the segregated colleges in the south had an excellent faculty and attracted the best and brightest students.  From this background the women moved mostly into teaching positions.  Finally during the Second World War and the Space Race they were able to move into math and engineering positions.

Langley, located in Virginia was not free of the blatant segregation of that state.  The black women computers were housed in the 'West Campus' away from the white computers.  They dealt with black only tables in the cafeteria and segregated bathrooms.  They moved their families into segregated housing and attended segregated churches.  But most found acceptance and admiration for their work at Langley.

The author does bring up one very interesting point.  As the computers moved up to mathematician and engineering positions with pay raises, they moved on to better housing.  An unforeseen result was that the families left in the lower cost housing no longer had the same role models to look up to and living conditions in those areas deteriorated.

Over all the author does a good job of presenting the life of a black computer.  She glosses over the technical accomplishments of NACA and NASA giving the date of Yuri Gagarin's  space flight, while skipping the date for Alan Shepard's and John Glenn's historic flights.  It's a good read for one to understand what is happening in our cities today.

Rocket Girls/ Nathalia Holt/ 338 pages

Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt traces the history of the Joint Propulsion Lab computers.  Not the current microchip bolstered version.  No Holt takes us back to the original computers.  Young women with strong math skills and a love of mathematics.  These early computers, yes they were called computers, worked on tissue thin paper with mechanical pencils solving complex problems that put the US into the Space Race.  Along the way, some dropped out to start families only to return to the work place later.  Some were present for the  early failures and few successes as the US rushed to catch up to the Soviet Union.  Eventually the pencils gave way to mechanical calculators, room size computers filled with tubes and finally person desk top computers.  Along the way the engineers almost always preferred the calculations done by the women over the machines.  This is an interesting read that combines flight test, space travel, and interplanetary travel into the tale of women in the workplace.