In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969 (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of S)
by Francis French, Colin Burgess
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Book Summary Information
Author: Colin Burgess, Francis FrenchForeword: Walter Cunningham
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-01
ISBN: 0803211287
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780803211285
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969 (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of S)
Book Review: A Far Above Average Chronicle of Apollo
Summary: 5 Stars
Since you're reading this review, and this is a somewhat obscure book, I'll assume that you're like me: you've read a lot of books covering the history of the Apollo Project already. Some have been outstanding, like Murray & Cox's "Apollo: the Race to the Moon" and Chaikin's definitive "A Man on the Moon", and some have been awful like Alan Shepard's ghost-written "Moonshot". Still others have been middle-of-the-road -- competent but unremarkable accounts that offer little to what's already widely known. I'm happy to say that "In the Shadow of the Moon" is very much in the mold of the former. Beyond being a carefully researched and accurate account of the Gemini and Apollo missions leading up to the first landing, it adds much to what's known about the behind the scenes social drama of "astronaut politics".
While paying reasonable attention to some of the technical aspects of early spaceflight, French and Burgess choose to focus more on the social interplay between the astronauts, what made each one different, who had what strengths and weaknesses, who knew how to play the political game to position themselves for a choice flight assignment and who didn't. Best of all, they're not guessing here -- their text comes from extensive interviews with many of the astronauts themselves. Time has loosened their lips and by the year 2000, many of them were willing to give an honest and no holds barred assessment of their former peers. Interested readers get some real gems here including (are you ready for this?) an entire chapter on Donn Eisele(!). Among other things, his divorce was a contributing factor to his never having flown again. It benefitted the other astronauts in allowing them to get their own divorces once the barrier had first been breached by Eisele. Both his former and second wives provided quite a bit of detail to the researchers here.
The authors also draw extensively from the best of the previously released histories to fill in the gaps where their own research didn't provide complete coverage -- something that's clear from the impressively lengthy bibliography.
Another nice aspect of this book is that they pay a lot of attention to Project Gemini -- probably half the book. This is a well-deserved spotlight for a program that is often completely overshadowed by Apollo. Of course, Apollo would never have been possible without the knowledge gained during Gemini. They include it for that reason, but also because it's impossible to tell a personality-based story of the astronauts without covering their experiences during their first flights. Frequently, competence demonstrated in Gemini was the determining factor in deciding who got assigned to what position in Apollo.
The only weak spot in this book is the chapter on the Soviet space program during the same era. It lacked much of the impact of the rest of the book and I raced to get through it so that I could return to "the good stuff".
More In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969 (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of S) reviews:
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1 2 3 4 5
Summary of In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969 (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of S)
In the Shadow of the Moon tells the story of the most exciting and challenging years in spaceflight, with two superpowers engaged in a titanic struggle to land one of their own people on the moon. While describing awe-inspiring technical achievements, the authors go beyond the missions and the competition of the space race to focus on the people who made it all possible. Their book explores the inspirations, ambitions, personalities, and experiences of the select few whose driving ambition was to fly to the moon.
(20080201)
Drawing on interviews with astronauts, cosmonauts, their families, technicians, and scientists, as well as rarely seen Soviet and American government documents, the authors craft a remarkable story of the golden age of spaceflight as both an intimate human experience and a rollicking global adventure. From the Gemini flights to the Soyuz space program to the earliest Apollo missions, including the legendary first moon landing, their book draws a richly detailed picture of the space race as an endeavor equally endowed with personal meaning and political significance.
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