To a Distant Day: The Rocket Pioneers (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of S)
When mankind first made the leap into space in the late 1950s, one commentator compared it to life crawling out of the primordial goop onto land. In this wide-ranging study, technology historian Gainor (Arrows to the Moon: Avro's Engineers and the Space Race) takes readers from ancient Chinese experiments with gunpowder to Robert Goddard's epiphany in his cherry tree when he was 17 and the thrilling moment Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Much of Gainor's book will be familiar to die-hard space buffs, but he has dug out shiny nuggets with which to dazzle readers, such as that the assassin of Czar Alexander II was a rocket buff and that the countdown was first used by director Fritz Lang in his filmFrau im Mond(Woman in the Moon). Gainor overlooks some worthwhile research, such as recent revelations that 13 women almost had a chance to join the early U.S. space program. On the whole, this is a detailed, deftly written history that should appeal to all would-be rocketeers, whether launching from fields on weekend afternoons or just dreaming of space in a comfortable chair. Photos.(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.