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Summary and Reviews of A Girl's Guide to Missiles by Karen Piper

A Girl's Guide to Missiles by Karen Piper

A Girl's Guide to Missiles

Growing Up in America's Secret Desert

by Karen Piper
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  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • First Published:
  • Aug 14, 2018, 336 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Aug 2019, 352 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

A poignant, surreal, and fearlessly honest look at growing up on one of the most secretive weapons installations on earth, by a young woman who came of age with missiles.

The China Lake missile range is located in a huge stretch of the Mojave Desert, about the size of the state of Delaware. It was created during the Second World War, and has always been shrouded in secrecy. But people who make missiles and other weapons are regular working people, with domestic routines and everyday dilemmas, and four of them were Karen Piper's parents, her sister, and--when she needed summer jobs--herself. Her dad designed the Sidewinder, which was ultimately used catastrophically in Vietnam. When her mom got tired of being a stay-at-home mom, she went to work on the Tomahawk. Once, when a missile nose needed to be taken offsite for final testing, her mother loaded it into the trunk of the family car, and set off down a Los Angeles freeway. Traffic was heavy, and so she stopped off at the mall, leaving the missile in the parking lot.

Piper sketches in the belief systems--from Amway's get-rich schemes to propaganda in The Rocketeer to evangelism, along with fears of a Lemurian takeover and Charles Manson--that governed their lives. Her memoir is also a search for the truth of the past and what really brought her parents to China Lake with two young daughters, a story that reaches back to her father's World War II flights with contraband across Europe. Finally, it recounts the crossroads moment in a young woman's life when she finally found a way out of a culture of secrets and fear, and out of the desert.

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Reviews

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Karen Piper succeeds in both telling the story of her youth and commentating on the pervasive ideologies that shaped her. Sometimes the prose needs stronger transitions, but the stories she tells are engaging and highlight her unique perspective...continued

Full Review (568 words)

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(Reviewed by Adrienne Pisch).

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Beyond the Book



The Cold War UFO Craze

Roswell Daily Record, July 8, 1947 In A Girl's Guide to Missiles, Karen Piper overhears her father talking about a coworker's belief in aliens. It's just one of many moments in which she associates her childhood at the top secret China Lake Naval Station with paranoia, secrecy and fear of the unknown. While Piper knows that the secrecy of her home is due to weapons development, conspiracy theories began to grow across the country about what actually took place in these facilities, and the most prevailing involved extraterrestrial visitors.

One of the most famous UFO sightings occurred in 1947 at the Army Air Field in Roswell, New Mexico, when a flying disc was observed falling from the sky and crashing to the ground. Roswell's official statement was that this object was ...

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