eileen pollack, what's the room you are referring to? >> guest: you know, for different when it's a jeffrey gren to really be experience of being the only woman in any room i think i'm trying to address but in my case it's any room in which science is going on, physics in particular in my case. so i was one of the first two women to get a bachelor of science degree from yale so i was often the only woman in the classroom. so really looking at why there's still come in my day, we understood why there were so few women in the room. really yale itself it only opened up to women a few years before but what interested me was larry summers, then president of harvard, asking them looking around his own university at the time and saying or other women physicists on my faculty? where are the women in other scientists? i was trying to answer that question is what happened between the time i was a college student at the time in 25 when larry summers was asking why are there still so few women in the science rims on his campus. >> host: why did you

eileen pollack, what's the room you are referring to? >> guest: you know, for different when it'a

we asked eileen pollack, one of the first two women to receive a bachelor's of science degree in physics at yale, and who now teaches creative writing at the university of michigan, to share an idea from her latest book: "the only woman in the room: why science is still a boys' club." here's an encore look. >> when i was growing up, i wanted passionately to be a physicist. but in seventh grade, the principal wouldn't let me enter the accelerated track in science and math. girls never go on to careers in those subjects, he told my mother. besides, he said, getting skipped ahead in science and math would ruin my social life. as a result, i arrived at yale in 1974 far behind my male classmates. i failed my first physics midterm, and my parents urged me to switch majors. but i worked incredibly hard and didn't give up. four years later, i graduated with a nearly perfect g.p.a., an "a" in a graduate course in gravitational theory, and two original research papers. even so, i didn't go on. as ridiculous as it seems now, i assumed that if i were talented enough to apply to graduate school, one

the "washington post" also recommends eileen pollack's: the only woman in the room.ooks at the discrepancy between women and men in the sciences and will haygood examines the life and impact of the first african-american supreme court justice, thurgood marshall. >> really marshall's hearings or five days stretch over 12 days and his nomination that when before six weeks. before marshall, the supreme court had been all whites and before him no nominees hearings had lasted more than a day, so with southerners leading the charge i knew there was great drama and i wanted to figure out why that happened and why they wanted to stop thurgood marshall's neck that's a look at some of the books the "washington post" recommends them over the past year. book tv has covered many of the authors and you can watch the full programs on a website, book tv.org. >> now political commentator cokie roberts joins us live for in-depth and she will answer your questions at her book, which include her most recent, capital gains publish this past april. ..