Gus Grissom: The Lost Astronaut (Indiana Biography Series)
The shortest of the original Mercury Seven astronauts stands tall in this solid biography. Born in a small town in central Indiana, Grissom served briefly in the air force at the end of World War II, then went to Purdue before returning to the military. He flew a tour in Korea, trained as a test pilot, and eventually was picked as one of the first astronauts. This led him to his famous 1961 suborbital flight in which the spacecraft sank upon return--not, it appears, because of any negligence on his part. He commanded the first Gemini mission in 1965, and thereafter was appointed to the 1967 first Apollo mission, in which he died in the fire that consumed the fatally defective spacecraft. Not a glamorous figure, Grissom was outstanding for his workmanlike attitude toward every task set before him. Plainly written but thoroughly researched, this book does the badly needed job of rescuing his memory from the pages ofLifeandTom Wolfe, his major previous limners.Roland GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved