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Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age
Matthew Brzezinski · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorArea 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base
Annie Jacobsen · 550 pages
It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere seventy-five miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the U.S. government-but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades. Myths and hypotheses about Area 51 have long abounded, thanks to the intense secrecy enveloping it. Some claim it is home to aliens,
Apollo 8
Jeffrey Kluger · 320 pages
Recounts the bold but dangerous mission to secure America's position as the first nation to reach the moon, revealing the dangers endured by its crew and the ways the mission brought renewal to a country ravaged by assassinations and war.
The Cradle of American Space Exploration
Kenny Mitchell
At the end of World War II, the U.S. government transferred Dr. Wernher von Braun and his team of scientists from Germany to America. No one could have imagined that the greatest engineering feat in human history would result. Working together, the Germans and their American counterparts became the Apollo team capable of responding to a presidential challenge issued in 1962 to take mankind to the
A Man on the Moon
Andrew Chaikin, Michael Kramer · 688 pages
For the 25th anniversary of the first moon landing, a winning and detailed account of the Apollo astronauts, a dozen of whom were the first human beings to walk on the face of the moon. The strength of the book lies in Chaikin's exhaustive research, including interviews with all 24 Apollo astronauts. Chaikin, an editor of Sky and Telescope, draws on the wealth of material from NASA's files--incl
Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon
Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton, Jay Barbree, Howard Benedict · 396 pages
The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and America's Race in Space
Eugene Cernan, Donald A. Davis · 356 pages
Eugene Cernan came of age as an astronaut during the most exciting and dangerous decade of space flight. His career spanned the entire Gemini and Apollo programs, from being the first person to spacewalk all the way around our world to the moment when he left man's last footprint on the Moon as commander of Apollo 17. Between those two historic events lay more adventures than an ordinary person c
Starman: The Truth Behind The Legend Of Yuri Gagarin
Jamie Doran, Piers Bizony · 248 pages
Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond
Gene Kranz · 539 pages
"Kranz was flight director for both Apollo 11, the mission in which Neil Armstrong fulfilled President Kennedy's pledge, and Apollo 13. He headed the Tiger Team that had to figure out how to bring the three Apollo 13 astronauts safely back to Earth. (In the film Apollo 13, Kranz was played by the actor Ed Harris, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance.)". "In Failure Is Not an
MIG Pilot: The Final Escape of Lt. Belenko
John Daniel Barron
Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon
Catherine Thimmesh · 80 pages
Red Star Rogue: The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S.
Kenneth Sewell, Clint Richmond · 305 pages
This book reads like a Tom Clancy novel, but it is all true. Today our greatest fear is that terrorists may someday acquire a nuclear weapon and use it against us. In fact, they have already tried. In 1968 a Soviet submarine sank off Hawaii, hundreds of miles closer to American shores than it should have been. Evidence strongly suggests that the sub sank while attempting to fire a nuclear missile,
Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon
Craig Nelson · 404 pages
A richly detailed and dramatic account of one of the greatest achievements of humankindAt 9:32 A.M. on July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 rocket launched in the presence of more than a million spectators who had gathered to witness a truly historic event. It carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins to the last frontier of human imagination: the moon.Rocket Men is the thrilling story of the
The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight
Martha Ackmann · 280 pages
In 1961, just as NASA launched its first man into space, a group of women underwent secret testing in the hopes of becoming America's first female astronauts. They passed the same battery of tests at the legendary Lovelace Foundation as did the Mercury 7 astronauts, but they were summarily dismissed by the boys' club at NASA and on Capitol Hill. The USSR sent its first woman into space in 1963; th
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles & Their Secret World War
Stephen Kinzer · 409 pages
A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into foreign adventures that decisively shaped today's world as the Cold War was at its peak.
The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy
David E. Hoffman · 577 pages
This riveting narrative history of the end of the arms race sheds new light on the frightening last chapters of the Cold War and the legacy of the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that remain a threat today. During the Cold War, world superpowers amassed nuclear arsenals containing the explosive power of one million Hiroshimas. The Soviet Union secretly plotted to create the "Dead Hand,"
Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars
Nathalia Holt · 427 pages
"The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn’t turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design,
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
James W. Douglass · 514 pages
In this fascinating and disturbing book James Douglass presents a compelling account of why President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and why the unmasking of this truth remains crucial for the future of our country and the world. Drawing on a vast field of investigation, including many sources available only in recent years, Douglass lays out a sequence of steps by JFK that transformed him, o
Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War
Giles Whittell · 274 pages
Who were the three men the American and Soviet superpowers exchanged at Berlin's Glienicke Bridge and Checkpoint Charlie in the first prisoner exchange between East and West? Bridge of Spies traces the paths to that exchange on February 10, 1962. It is the story of three men -- William Fisher, alias Rudolf Abel, a British born KGB agent arrested by the FBI in New York City and jailed as a Soviet s
Too Far From Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space
Chris Jones · 296 pages
Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream
Tanya Lee Stone · 139 pages
They had the right stuff. They defied the prejudices of the time. And they blazed a trail for generations of women to follow. What does it take to be an astronaut? Excellence at flying, courage, intelligence, resistance to stress, top physical shape — any checklist would include these. But when America created NASA in 1958, there was another unspoken rule: you had to be a man. Here is the tale
The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
David Talbot · 704 pages
"An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the man who transformed the CIA into the most powerful and secretive colossus in Washington, from the founder of Salon.com and author of the New York Times bestseller Brothers. America's greatest untold story: the United States' rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA. Drawing on