the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age
Exhaustively researched, brilliantly conceived, and beautifully written.(New York Times Book Review)A lucid and comprehensive political history of the American, European, and Russian space programs.(New Scientist)Once every decade or so, a book comes along that stands by itself as a remarkable contribution to the literature of a field. Such a work is Walter A. McDougall's... the Heavens and the Earth.(Technology and Culture)[A] boldly conceived, elegantly written, and unfailingly provocative history of the new age of space.(Science)This highly acclaimed study approaches the space race as a problem in comparative public policy.(The Astronomical Society of the Pacific)[An] immensely readable and elegant book.(Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)The definitive, surprising and highly readable history of the U.S. space program. Forget visionary rhetoric about humans' need to explore the next frontier: McDougal demonstrates how NASA's moon missions grew directly from Hitler's V-2 rocket project at Pennemunde and were all about the classic military necessity of controlling the high ground—in this case the really high ground... [One of] the five best books I have read about the U.S. space program.(Mark Bowden, author ofBlack Hawk Down)