Too Far From Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space
When the space shuttleColumbiabroke up during its re-entry into Earth's atmosphere in February 2003, two  American astronauts were still aboard the International Space Station, along  with a Russian flight engineer. With further NASA flights suspended for months,  perhaps years, questions began to emerge not only about how to bring the three  men back, but how to provide them with enough supplies while they remained in  space. Jones first wrote about the Expedition 6 team in an award-winning  article forEsquire(where he is a  contributing editor), and his story combines gripping narrative and strongly  defined characters. Though extensive accounts of the Americans' backgrounds  seems at first to put the brakes on, it's a necessary counterweight to parallel  passages about the little-understood Russian space program—essential  information because the three eventually took "an accelerated, lung-crushing  dive" in a Soyuz capsule. In addition to that adventure, Jones's reporting is  filled with details of life aboard the space station, from the amazing beauty  of a space walk to the more mundane problem of "taking a crap" in zero gravity.  That sort of frank talk enhances readers' identification with the astronauts,  making their drama all the more engrossing.(Mar.  6)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.