To Touch the Face of God: The Sacred, the Profane, and the American Space Program, 1957-1975 (New Series in NASA History)
Lively and interesting, this book accurately reflects the disorienting effects of ventures into Heaven by men in space suits.(James Gilbert, University of Maryland, College Park)To Touch the Face of God... support[s] the importance of the strength of individual faith, the power of community, and the American need for both heroes and villains of biblical proportions to change the world.(David RosmanNew York Journal of Books)Oliver analyses spaceflight and religion in a sophisticated manner, well informed by the scholarly literature of 'new aerospace history,' which examines intersections between space history and other disciplines or themes... Oliver engages histories of theology and religious practice in a broad conversation of motivations, implications, transformations and reinforcements of religion in the history of spaceflight.(Margaret WeitekampTimes Higher Education)Religious and science colletions alike will relish this survey.(Midwest Book Review)To Touch the Face of Godis well-written, with short, precise excursions into what almost amounts to poetry, for example: ‘They [the astronauts in space] could not sit for a morning in the manner of Thoreau, slowly incubating epiphany’... It is an important contribution to the study of the complex connections between spaceflight and religion and thus highly recommended.(Thore BjørnvigQuest: History of Spaceflight Quarterly)