in the brothers, john foster dulles and their secret world war, stephen kinzer presents a dual biography of the former secretary of state and former cia director allen dulles and how their political ideologies shaped american foreign policy during the cold war. gillick surprise winning journalist david henkel reports on an infantry battalion that returned from baghdad in thank you for your service. in thomas jefferson's koran, islam and the founders, american scholar of islamic history recounts thomas jefferson's academic interest in islam which incurred to believe in religious

pluralism. look for these titles in bookstores this coming we can watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> you are watching booktv. next george morgan tells the story of his mother, mary sherman morgan, the first female rocket scientist in the united states and inventor of hydyne, the propellant that boosted america's first satellite into orbit. the program mary sherman morgan worked on was highly secret so her family had little idea of her accomplishments until after her death. this is about 45 minutes. [applause] >> thank you very much. i would like to thank the bookstore for inviting me this evening. i have a few prepared remarks which will include reading a few passages from the book. these remarks will basically tell you a little bit about my mother and her story and the

book came to be. i have a question for you. it is a rhetorical question so you don't have to answer. question is this. how much do you really know about your parents? when i was growing up i was like any other kid. i wanted to know what my dad did every time he went to work in the morning. i knew he was an engineer at rocketdyne in canoga park the was the doing? when i asked him what you do when you go to work each day he would always have the same dancer. model little of this and a little of that. long after i got married and was raising a family of my own my father invited me to attend an air show. when we were there he ran into an old friend of his from work. the man looked at me and said i worked next to your dad for 15 years. i said you are the guy i have

been looking for. i want to know, what did my father do every morning when he went to work each day. and he got very quiet, thoughtful and said in a little of this, a little of that. that is the day i discovered my father had been doing more than acting:all those years. he was repeating the party line that all engineers with secret clearances had been tossed by their employer. if my knowledge of my father's daily vocation was meager it was even less with my mother. i had been told that my parents had worked together at rocketdyne although in different departments. i knew that shortly after my younger brother steven was born my mother retired to become a full-time wife and mother. over the years i heard a few whispers among friends and

former co-workers, briefly worded clues about important secret project she had worked on over the years in the 40s and 50s. but whenever i probes for details the whispers would stop and the speakers would disperse. when i asked my mother when she did in the aerospace business i couldn't even get a little of this, a little of that. whatever she did there she didn't want to talk about and eventually she insisted that i stop asking. the thing i need to make clear is this. we never talked much in the morgan household growing about anything. my mother for example not only refuse to talk about her life in the aerospace business but refused to talk about almost any aspect of her life. was secretive about everything and placed a high value on personal privacy even within her own family. i am sure some of your parents would regale you with many

stories from their youth, not my mom. nothing about walking to school barefoot in the snow uphill both ways, none of those great stories. my brother and two sisters, our mother's life was a steel safe, locked and shut. i would like to read from the opening paragraph of the book. this is a story about a mother who never talked to her children. this is a story about a wife who rarely talked to her husband those they were married for 53 years. this is a story of a woman who desperately wanted happiness but could never summon the strength to reach for it. this is a story of a woman who had a family that loved her but struggled to love them in return. this is a story about a woman people admired but could never get close to.

this is a story of a woman who harbored many secrets and lived in daily fear is that those secrets would one day be revealed. this is the story of a woman who took those secrets to her grave. this is a story about america's first female rocket scientist, story about my mother. into january of 2004 i received a call, my mother passed away, victim of emphysema, many cigarettes over too many use. i ask my father what i could do, give the eulogy at your mother's funeral and write an obituary for the newspaper. the dilemma i faced was how do you give a eulogy or write an obituary about someone, even your own mother who has kept everything bottled up in secret entire life. the time had come for people to

stop acting. the time had the come for people to start talking about mary chairman morgan so i talked to my father's house and spent several hours interviewing him, prying open that steel safe. he told me a few things some of which i was aware of, she was born in a small farm in north dakota, was the youngest of eight children, her father refused to send her to school wanting her to work on the farm. eventually the state of north dakota intervened and forced her father to allow her to attend school. they even gave her a worse so she could get safely across the river to their home from the schoolhouse. when she finally enrolled she was three years behind her peers. even show she managed to surpass everyone graduating in 1940 as her high school class valedictorian. as soon as the graduation

ceremony was over, her father insisted she returned to work on the farm full-time. instead she packed her bags and ran away from home in the middle of the night and headed for 0 file where she enrolled in college near toledo, ohio, which doesn't exist anymore. during my interview with my father he also gave me one other important piece of information, he said in the 1950s my mother had worked on a secret program that was instrumental in america launching its first satellite, explorer 1, your mother was the first female rockets scientist, did you know that? i said no, no one ever talks in the morgan family. mom would never talk to me about anything. my father said don't feel bad. your mother never talked to me much either. he then gave me a list of my father's fewer former coworkers

and suggested i interview them as well which i did and as i conducted those interviews slowly, ever so slowly the onion layers of my mother's secret life began to peel away. one of those former co-workers was irving, i assume many of you recognize that name. in the 1950s he was a chemical engineer at north american aviation. after a losing his job there in 1960 he studied law, became a defense attorney los angeles, his most famous client, charles manson. he would be referred to as the toscanini of tedium but his first career was in aerospace engineering and at north american he worked at the desk next to my mother. the day i was born, charles manson's future attorney came to the hospital to give me my first birthday present, a baseball bat. i was one day old and owned a

baseball bat. after a few days i completed my interviews with co-workers, somebody had done it over the phone. i felt i had enough information to complete the two tasks my father had given me. i talked up an obituary and sent to los angeles times. i figured an obituary about the first female rocket scientist would be a slam-dunk that would warrant a lot of space, perhaps even half a page. i wrote to the eulogy and they later stood at a podium and delivered it to room full of family, friends and co-workers. after the funeral we had a small incident. i served up a plate and went to sit at a table filled with several of my mother's former co-workers. to tell you what happened next i read from the bottom of page 13. no more than two minutes went by before i felt a stern cabin on my right hand. i turned to see the face of an elderly gentleman sitting across the table. his face wrinkled and folded

like those k-9s that when the ugliest dog contest. he used his bony index finger to punch through to my nose. you need to listen to the young man. he was calling me young man. this is great. yes sir, i said. i knew your mother, worked with her, i am going to tell you something you probably don't know. listen carefully. i am listening. he looked left and right as if checking for fbi surveillance, then stared through my body like it was made of glass. in 1957 your mother singlehandedly saved america's space program and nobody knows about it but handful of old men. you need to tell the story, he is said. you need to let people know the truth. don't let her die nameless.

the scientific community, and decided to set aside political differences and work together to which the list of objectives. they call this the international geophysical year. it was run from july 1st, 1957, through december 31st, 1958. the most significant of their goals was for the united states and soviet union. en the competition of any sort, in no time at all that is what it became. and the political system, american democracy and soviet communism and new standards this face-off may sound quaint. and the undeclared space race

was a rocket program called project vanguard, television news reporting come of age in real time. won american vanguard rock after another blew up on the launch that or some other malfunction. it was a black eye for american science and embarrassment for the american people and humiliation for the government. in the middle of all that, the soviet union was close to making its first orbital attempt. the sad irony to all this was america had at its disposal the very finest rocket scientists in the world. dr. verner von braun and 100 german engineers who were expatriate of the united states under secret postwar program called project paper clip. the vanguard rocket program used none of these. the federal government how did away in texas called for bliss. the government was naturally concerned about the

embarrassment of having former chairman war machine scientists working too closely on american projects but at the end of 1957, two events occurred that changed everything. the soviets successfully launched sputnik and another vanguard rocket blew up on the launch pad. under intense public pressure the government approached turner von braun and practically vacant for help. but juan peron had a problem of his own. he had a rocket, the redstone that could theoretically reach orbit but only if its performance could be boosted by 7%. insignificant amount in the rocket engineering business. von braun and his engineers needed a more powerful fuel. they were unable to come up with one. none of the components that then existed would require that 7% performance enhancement. and the budget of the u.s. army the army decided to award a

contract in north american aviation come up with this mystical nonexistent propellant. and gavthe following instructions to the administrators of north american. all countries entire space program depends on solving this one singular problem, make sure you put your very best man on it. whoever you choose doesn't know it yet but he is about to become the most important person in america. the head of the department of research and development give this reply, i will be glad to give this project to my very best man but i have to warn you when it comes to new and exotic rocket propellants our very best man is a woman. what he neglected tell the journal does this woman was a farm girl from north dakota with only a high school diploma on her education resume. so it was my mother found herself at the center of political and technological maelstrom. she arrived in north american

actor spent her life as a chemist. i said in 1940s she ran to continue her education. no sooner had she gone to ohio and spent the years there and she was recruited by a local weapons factory. perhaps you have heard of plum brook ordinance that supply a large number of munitions for the government, for the military during world war ii. for four years mary worked in the most volatile and dangerous chemicals designing explosives. after the war as most of the women left their work, returned to heart and home my mother applied for jobs around the country, finally landing one with north american aviation. i should mention even though she was given the same work assignments as the engineers she was forced to carry the lower

pay grade title of analysts since she did not have a college degree. the job description was theoretical performance specialist, responsibility to mathematically calculate how two rocket propellants would theoretically perform when mixed and burned. this was cheaper than having to go out and test them. the specialty positioned her to be put in charge of on brawn's propellant contract when it arrived at north american aviation seven years later. so it was a farm girl from north dakota with a high school diploma was given a task of succeeding where experience, education and genius tattletales. after five months of work mary achieve what von braun and his best engineers failed to do, created a brand new rocket propellant that more than satisfied von braun at 7% requirement. the redstone rocket at the time

used liquid oxygen which is frequently abbreviated by rocket engineers as lox. when asked what she wanted to name her new fuel, she said bagel, so we can sit amidst and uses lox and bagel. she sent that to the u.s. army. the u.s. army did not share her sense of humor and instead called it hydyne. when it was launched in explore 1 was the one and only time hydyne would be used in an american rocket. this brings me to the los angeles times obituary. after i send the article watch the newspaper every day. the obituary was important for me and my family because it would give our mother the notoriety she deserved but never received during life but another week went by and i hadn't seen it published. i called the newspaper's obituary department and was referred to a lady named barbara. i asked if she received the

obituary for mary sherman morgan. she said she had received it but decided not to print it. instead, she said they were unable to print it because they could not verify independently verify any of the information in the obituary article. over the next three weeks i had many conversations with barbara sending notes and copies of my interviews, signed affidavits from co-workers but it wasn't enough. my mother's lifelong insistence on privacy had intentionally or unintentionally written her out of the historical record. there was nothing in the historical record of any of her accomplishments. one day i open the los angeles times and read a half page obituary about the man who invented the oscar meyer weenie whistle. for me that was the last straw.

i called up barbara, description of what happens is on page 15. my final phone conversation with the editor of the los angeles times department grew heated as she continued to refuse to publish my mother's obituary. when the argument reach the red-faced crescendoing she continued to be obstinate, i threatened to take some kind of action. she replied what are you going to do, mr. morgan? su us? oh no. i am going to do something much worse than sue you, i said. i am going to write a play. i hung up the phone and the media and my laptop. through the magic of theater, i decided i would accomplish what history, the army, nasa, the media and my own mother refused to do. i would write a play and use it to bring mary sherman morgan's accomplishments into the light of day. and it turned into a journey.

it would take me to many places as i played detective tracking down the small number of former co-workers who were still alive. and retired, some for decades. and the desire to help was unanimous. in november of 2008 the play at the 11 opened play and to large enthusiastic audiences. mothers and daughters would come to me and tell me how inspiring the play had been for them. a few years after the playclothes at caltech i receive the strange e-mail from a woman i had never heard of. this is what it said. i have seen the media attention, the time has come for you to know something. you have an older sister you

have never been told about. i should point out the media attention was the result of caltech producing the play. i assumed it was the electronic equivalent of a crank call so i deleted it but over the next few days it started to haunt me. one day i went into my e-mail and and deleted it. kind of makes you wonder if the internet is really like the waw conservation of matter and energy. nothing can ever really be destroyed. i sent a reply, who are you and where did you get this information? she replied call this number. she provided a phone-number. name is ruth, she has the information you need. one evening i called the phone number she provided and the groggy ruth answered, sounded like i had woken her. i told her about the e-mails. do you know what this is all about? i ask. do i really have a sister no one has ever told me about?

yes, she said. i am your sister. we talked a little and she explained my mother had gotten pregnant from a fellow student many years before and had given her up for adoption before her first birthday. it was a story rich from a lifetime movie. but i still wasn't convinced. i called my father and son are you aware that mom gave birth to a daughter before you guys met and she was given up for adoption? my father said yes, but how did you find out. one last thing from the book. my den is filled with boxes of stuff, history books, notebooks, photographs and video cards filled with talking heads. i stare at them realizing they constitute ten years of my life. all those interviews, all that research and i don't know much about my mother. she was a genius at everything she did but in nothing else was

she more skilled than her still the campaign of personal self erasure. her efforts of living a full life on one hand while applauding the expansion of her name from history on the other required level of mental errors the cassidy far beyond the average person. fortunately her attempt to make herself well regarded in life but anonymous in death ultimately failed as she touched too many people. i began this evening by asking you a question, how many of you, how much do you really know about your parents? for those of you who are parents, how much do your children really know about you? when we are gone from this earth our legacy will go with us if we have not taken the time to write down a history of our lives, to record both our failures and accomplishments, stargel is an our sorrows, our dreams and our disappointments, whether they be

big or small. for a people who are going to want to know about you some day. to quote one of mozart's france from the stage play and film amadeus, write it down, wolfy. thank you very much. [applause] >> i guess we will have a q&a. do you need the mic? any methodical -- ashley is here too. yes? >> when you talked about the play, i wondered what your reaction was.

>> i was one of those people. let me come to the short one. we had met at the time but i was one of the people who came and talked to him. and being a woman and engineer, it really touched me. i grew up as part of a generation that experienced a lot of gender prejudice. i walked into a meeting and been asked to get coffee. that can be tremendously frustrating for us, but watching that play really helped me to put everything in perspective because when we still have a ways to go we have come so far. i never had to worry about going to school or going to get technical degrees at the university or at least with some effort being accepted by my colleagues. i have the luxury to complain

about the little things thanks to people like mary sherman morgan. i spent a large part of my professional career trying to advise young girls and remind them what is important and not let the little things get to them so that they can succeed and like mary did, do their work and do it well and do it right and let it be. >> if you have a theory why there are more men than women in stem, what is it? >> i want to point out in a job like working on the mars rover is, both of the current rovers, opportunity and curiosity, the project is 50% women. we have come a long way.

it is largely cultural. i think for whatever reason, we haven't given girls or boys or really good female technical role model. more and more, kids are growing up developing their ideas of who they can be from the media and an example i like to give is while it is a wonderful show and very entertaining nobody watches the big bang theory and what to grow up to the sheldon. we need to to teach people we are not sheldon and there's a lot more to offer. i don't ever want to hear again and i hear all the time that girls can't do math and boys won't like me if i am smart. we don't just encourage the girls but the police. i do think lack of good cultural image of who technical people really are. >> i would like to answer that. my mother was the only female in

junior out of 900 engineers at rocketdyne, one out of 900. i asked her once, mate and offhand comment, you probably have a lot of dates when you were working there, didn't you? she said no. i think she had that same problem, guys didn't want to date her because she was so smart. that is my guess but i don't really know. she would never tell me. >> how many really few guys change the subject or started talking to my friends let told them i was a physicist. >> two part question. has your play been published so it could be produced elsewhere across the country and has there been any movie interest? >> the play is not published

with the professional theatrical publishing company like samuel french. i do have for a website, music box international, which is a small little royalty co.. .. but the manuscript, address and the manuscript, we were still two months away from obligation before they started getting

calls from film producers interested in knowing if the rights were available. now, nobody is actually approached us with an offer to make the movie. they just keep calling wanting to know is the rights are still available. we say yes, they are still available so nothing has happened yet, but there is some heat being generated. >> what's been the reaction from your sister -- is your brother still i speak what he is. >> what has been their investigation and what you do not? >> that's a very good question. i have a brother, and now three sisters. i've got to get in the habit of saying three sisters, not two sisters. it's taken me a long time to get used to that. one of my sisters, her name is monica. she's younger than me. she's the baby of the family.

she was very upset when she found out i was writing a play. she became more upset when she found out i was running a book. because she knew that the sherman family would not be very well portrayed in either the play or the book, which they are not. the reason they're not well portrayed is because they didn't deserve to be well portrayed. [laughter] i mean, any father refused to send his kids to school is not going to get a fair shake in anything i write, i'll tell you that for sure. this is a man who refused to send my mother to school for three years, and we did so after the state of north dakota forced him, brought a share of on their property and threatened to arrest him. so monica knew what was coming. she knew i would not be portraying the sherman family in a good light, and she's very friendly with a lot of the sherman side of the family. and so she, she's not even speaking to me right now.

the counterpoint to that is everybody else in the sherman family loves the book. [laughter] family, what can you do? >> this older sister, what is your relationship to her now? >> she always knew about us, okay. so this knowledge thing was a one way street. growing up, my mother would exchange christmas cards with their, sent her letters, kept up with the dialogue with her for many, many years, without ever telling us, us california kids, that his sister existed. so when i found out about her, i, of course i mention i had a phone conversation with her. i called all my siblings and i said we've got to get together with her, we've got to meet this diverse and. she lives in detroit.

she works for the catholic church as a secretary for a priest. i said, we have to meet this person. so we decided we would pool all of our resources and we would buy her a ticket and fly her out of. so i called her up and i said we've pulled so many together. we will buy you a plane ticket and see how to get she said oh, no, my husband passed away a few years ago, i inherited a lot of money, i can buy my own ticket. okay, so she bought a ticket and she came out for christmas vacation. and we took her to the center and did all the southern california intellectual stuff. because that's what she wanted to do. and we took her to the pacific ocean, which she had never seen. that impress to more than the getty center and more than everything else put together. >> wasn't only used once? can you elaborate? >> hide time was a stopgap measure just get something into

orbit. just to get our name on the chalkboard as, yes, we are in space now. but at the same time for all of us worked there, other new rocket engines were being designed with ever more powerful propellers. by the time export one when into space, technology had surpassed. it's kind of like my dad once said something which is kind of apropos. he said, it was like the apple ii computer it was state-of-the-art for four weeks. [laughter] somebody else had their hand up here? yes. >> are any of your mother's siblings in science? >> no. she was the youngest. she was the second youngest your and all the sherman kids have passed away now.

but the husband of her sister elaine worked on the apollo program and helped design the apollo command module. and when that terrible fire occurred that took the life of three astronauts, his department was in charge of making certain electrical devices for the apollo command module. they had to redesign one of the parts to make it fire safe. when they rebuild this part, hee personally flew out to cape canaveral and was told he had to hand deliver it to the person in charge of the command module and stand and watch them install it. so his name was tony. tony was very involved in the space program, but none of my other mothers brothers and sisters were involved in anything remotely technical or technological.

>> are you still working on trying to collaborate her accomplishments? or have you stopped? >> i mean, and i still promoting -- >> well, no, trying to collaborate the truth about your mom and her accomplishments spent that's what i'm trying to do with the book isn't trying, there's nothing better than a book to help get information out to the world at large. and i'm collaborating in the sense that i'm coming to places like this and talking about her, doing everything i can to promote the book. it's not exactly collaboration, but it's more promotion than collaboration. [inaudible] >> oh, corroborate. i'm sorry. okay, that's a very good question. yeah. you know, if you read the book

you'll discover there's a lot of information on this. every company that i could've gotten information from stonewall to me. there are a lot of companies now involved in this because north american aviation, which became rocketdyne from branch off in all sorts of other corporate entities osha swaddled each other, purchased each of the console them out. so now you've got entities like boeing, pratt and whitney, and how does an other aerospace companies that all have record somewhere in the bowels of their computer systems about what my mother did in the '40s and 50s. and every time i call these people they always said the same answer, call our attorney. they would not give me one piece of information about her at all. even after she passed away they would give me nothing. the only help i got at all was rocketdyne provided me with three photographs, two of which

we publish in the book. but as far as information, i guess i'm going to have to go to the freedom of information act or something, because they won't give me anything. it's still a big secret. [inaudible] should recall ourselves and say hey, you should do this? >> they still haven't published the obituary. i'm actually, my dad asked me that a few months ago. he said, he think the "l.a. times" will ever publish your moms a where? i said that, i'm hoping kind of now they don't publish it because it's such a great story to tell. [laughter] >> maybe you can get into publish a book review. [laughter] >> or go to the "l.a. times" book fair in april spent actually, i would like to point out that the "los angeles times" newspaper is only major newspaper that is not yet printed a review of the book. >> i will cancel my subscriptions.

[inaudible] >> the trilogy. for those of you who know brian, the theater director at caltech, he and i didn't play for a long time to the trilogy of science themed plays, original place. rocket girl was the first. pasadena that one was the second or the one where working on now we do not have an opening date yet. we are working on a play about stanley and martin, the coldfusion guys from 1989. i'm sure many of you remember that. that big science debacle. so there's a lot of human drama in that store so i think it would make good theater. we are working on that now, but i had no idea when that's ever going to come to the stage. thank you for asking. thank you for allowing me that plug. >> did your mother ever continue her education at all? >> after all of us kids were

growing -- were grown up and moved away, she went back to kenya because, here's college in woodland hills, and she got an associates degree from peers college. [inaudible] >> in energy -- something having to do with energy conversation but i can't remember -- it's not energy conservation. she became an expert -- interesting. she had a second career. she became an expert in energy audits for business and homes. when he business was been $100,000 on an electrical bill, they would come to her and she would help them reduce their electrical in energy bills. she got really good at it, became really big in demand for about 10 years. [inaudible] >> no. [laughter] >> you know, my dad was really a great dad. he would take us to baseball

games and he would enroll as an sports and to all, take us on field trips to the science museums and all sorts of places. my dad was a really great dad. but my mother never wanted to come along. she was kind of a homebody. she does want to stay at home and drink coffee and read the newspapers but read the newspapers. she religious hated getting -- didn't like getting out of the house. she could have been a core for but because she liked camping. -- agoraphobia. [inaudible] some other girl schools around the area tell promote science education? >> they still have a girl only schools? >> yes, yes. >> i would love to. if you have any connections, hook me up. but i'm looking for any and every sort of way to promote the

book i can. and that's certainly a good idea. >> i think we have time for one more. >> okay, one more. >> maybe tomorrow. >> -- maybe two more. >> i'm coming from high school, the high school where you went. >> go eagles. all right. >> there's a lot of interest actually in women's engineering there, so is there anyway could possibly come by? i think a lot of people would be interested in the book. >> absolutely, would love to. i have a soft, warm thighs -- warm spot in my heart for that school. when i was there there only 300. >> 2000 between the two campuses.

[inaudible] >> do we have a bunch of -- raise your hand. wow. for those of you don't know, it's a small, private high school, college preparatory in woodland hills. they change the name. they change it to westville. now i have to think about it now. all right, one last question spent the last question is for her. she could meet her, she got a stay of his associates at me all the way from long beach. her question to you is, where the toxic lead levels -- toxicity levels a concern to you during your visit? or did you wear a hazmat suit? >> the action of public tours of the field laboratory and nobody wears hazmat outfits. from what i understand, there is no chemical hazard danger there at all. there's some stuff in the news about how there might be some

radiation hazard in one or two parts -- 2800 acres. it's a pretty big piece of property but they also did some nuclear work there for a couple decades. and there is some concern about some nuclear intimidation there, but i'm not going and i'm still feeling okay. they didn't have us where any sort of protective outfits. i think they were probably smart enough to keep us away from any of the dangerous stuff. i wanted to climb on the rocket and they wouldn't let me. thank you very much. [applause] >> you are watching booktv, nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. >> now i'm booktv from the 13th annual national book festival on the national mall in