Nathalia Holt Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Nathalia Holt is a nonfiction, biography, and science author with a molecular biology doctoral degree. At some point, she decided to leave the world of research behind and turned to writing, as she covered a range of subject matter with a common thread.
Many of her stories usually highlight important figures that have over the years been mainly invisible.

She particularly loves to highlight the contributions of women who have made significant contributions, particularly in the fields of science that have not been properly recognized for their efforts.
Nathalia published “Cured” her debut novel in 2014 and has been writing ever since. She became a New York Times bestselling novelist with the publishing of “Rise of the Rocket Girls” in 2016.

Her work has appeared in many prestigious publications such as Time, The New York Times, Popular Science, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, and The Atlantic.

Holt grew up in Manhattan and during the 90s while she was still a teenager, she was an intern at a Hell’s Kitchen hospital. This was a hospital with a massive AIDS ward and this had a significant impact on the young teen.
Ever since she was very young, she wanted to become a scientist. It was for this reason that when she went to college, she decided to major in molecular biology and then got her doctorate in the same.

Her PhD dissertation was done in HIV gene therapy and she would become an award-winning scientist who penned some groundbreaking works on the biology of HIV.

Over the several years that she was working as a researcher, she trained in various institutions across the United States. Holt has trained at Tulane University, the Ragon Institute of MGH, the University of Southern California, Harvard University, and MIT.
Her debut novel “Cured” tells the story of two patients nicknamed “The Berlin Patients,” who were cured while on very different treatment plans.

Nathalia Holt has said that she had to write the work since she realized that very few people had heard of the story.

She currently makes her home in Pacific Grove, California where she lives with her husband and two kids.

Nathalia Holt’s “Rise of the Rocket Girls” is set during the Second World War, a war that resulted in a new desire for improved and more deadly weapons.

Governments involved in the war spent a lot of money on stockpiling weapons. At this time, missile development was in the very early stages but once the war began, everybody realized that it would make for a very accurate and effective weapon.
Governments, universities, and private hobbyists were all working sporadically to improve missile technology.

While they were not then cohesive, they began coming together sometimes as groups of engineers and scientists and sometimes just friends working together in abandoned airfields, factories, and warehouses, as they researched missile technology.
Some of the men involved in working in these laboratories had girlfriends who ultimately became interested in the work they were doing.

Some of these women were lucky to have been brought up by fathers who indulged their interest in mathematics, while some had gone to the few universities that allowed women to study math.
In time, some of the women would become auxiliary team members working on the development of missiles.

Some of these would then become part of the “Jet Propulsion Lab” mathematics calculator department, where they helped develop the tech for the accurate shooting of rockets.

“The Queens of Animation” by Nathalia Holt is an excellent work that follows the life and times of the women who worked at Disney and played a significant role in bringing animation to movie theaters and then to TV.
Earlier on, women only worked in the “Paint and Ink” department at Disney until several got employed after they were poached from the “Chouinard Institute.”

Walt Disney found their artistic talents appealing, given that he wanted his stories to be almost like paintings. The first female animator was Retta Scott who blazed the trail for other women that came after her.
She famously said that before one drew anything, one needed to understand it first. Another important pioneer was Grace Huntington, a pilot and artist who broke airspeed records but just could not find any work as a pilot.
Other important people include watercolor artist Mary Blair and Lee her husband who got employment at Disney. Mary’s artistic flair and style were developed over the years and became a critical component in many movies produced by Disney.
Walt Disney came up with a training program to help his female employees learn animation skills so that they could move into animation and the “Paint and Ink Department.”
It is a fascinating historical journey into the ups and downs of Disney that chronicles the contributions of women to how it became the company it is today.

Nathalia Holt’s novel “Wise Gals,” tells the story of some very influential female spies who worked for the American government in the early days of the CIA.

They were among the people who came up with the template for the most modern espionage tactics following the end of the Second World War.

Following the end of the War, Elizabeth Sudmeier, Adelaide Hawkins, Eloise Page, and Mary Hutchison who were nicknamed “the wise girls” were some of the best female spies of the CIA.

They are courageous, smart, intelligent women with a sense of humor who developed some very innovative tools for gathering intelligence. Through the years of the “Cold War,” these women played vital roles on the international stage.
Adelaide developed innovative cryptosystems that made for very advanced communication between and among spies. Mary worked in Asia and Europe building allegiances and partnerships that lasted for tens of years.

Elizabeth worked in the Middle East risking her life to find much-needed intelligence on some advanced weaponry made by the Soviets.

Eloise wielded a lot of influence on technical and scientific operations across the globe, as she exposed threats of global terrorism.

These women would rise to high positions of power and make real changes in intelligence in a traditionally male organization.