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A girl's guide to missiles : growing up in America's secret desert / Karen Piper.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, New York : Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, [2018]Copyright date: ©2018Description: x, 322 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780399564543
  • 0399564543
Other title:
  • Growing up in America's secret desert
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Becoming China Lakers -- A teenage weaponeer -- Dynamic instability -- The Cold War at home -- Anything can be a weapon -- Off target -- Life without weapons.
Summary: The China Lake missile range in the Mojave Desert 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 the Piper family. Her dad designed the Sidewinder. Once, when a missile nose needed to be taken offsite for final testing, her mother loaded it into the trunk of the family car, set off down a Los Angeles freeway, and even stopped off at the mall, leaving the missile in the parking lot. Piper's memoir also reaches back to her father's World War II flights with contraband across Europe.-- Adapted from publisher information.
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Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Biography Piper, K. P665 Available 33111009231214
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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. 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. It also 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.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-322).

Becoming China Lakers -- A teenage weaponeer -- Dynamic instability -- The Cold War at home -- Anything can be a weapon -- Off target -- Life without weapons.

The China Lake missile range in the Mojave Desert 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 the Piper family. Her dad designed the Sidewinder. Once, when a missile nose needed to be taken offsite for final testing, her mother loaded it into the trunk of the family car, set off down a Los Angeles freeway, and even stopped off at the mall, leaving the missile in the parking lot. Piper's memoir also reaches back to her father's World War II flights with contraband across Europe.-- Adapted from publisher information.

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