Table of Contents

BOOK 1: "Fire in the Cockpit!"; The Office; First Around the Moon (Apollo 8) - The Decision, A Hole in the Stars, "In the Beginning"; "It's All Over but the Shouting"; "Before This Decade Is Out" - The Parlay, "We Is Down Among 'Em!", Down to the Wire; The First Lunar Landing (Apollo 11) - The Eagle has landed, Magnificent Desolation, "Before This Decade Is Out". BOOK 2: Sailors on the Ocean of Storms (Apollo 12) - The Education of Alan Bean, Shore Leave, In the Belly of the Snowman; The Crown of an Astronaut's Career (Apollo 13) - A Change of Fortune, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, The Chill of Space; The Story of a Full-up Mission (Apollo 14) - Big Al Flies Again, To the Promised Land, Solo, The Climb. BOOK 3: The Scientist; A Fire to Be Lighted; To the Mountains of the Moon (Apollo 15) - "Exploration at Its Greatest", High Point, The Spirit of Galileo, The Final Selection; The Unexpected Moon (Apollo 16) - Luna Incognita, "You Just Bit Off More Than You Can Chew", "Or Wherever Geologists Go"; The Last Men on the Moon (Apollo 17) - Sunrise at Midnight, Apollo at the Limit, Witnesses to the Earthrise. EPILOGUE: The Audiences of the Moon. APPENDICES: Astronaut Biographical Information; Persons Interviewed; Apollo Mission Data.

About the Author

Born in 1956, Andrew Chaikin grew up in Great Neck, New York, with a fascination for the heavens and space exploration. While studying geology at Brown University he participated in the Viking mission to Mars at the NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In addition to his work as a space historian and science journalist, Chaikin has taught extensively at NASA. He lives in Vermont. Info about Chaikin's other books can be found on his website, www.andrewchaikin.com.

Reviews

Scheduled to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the first lunar landing on July 20, 1969, this chronicle offers a comprehensive, often penetrating look at NASA's Apollo program. Originating in 1961, when President John Kennedy told Congress that the U.S. should attempt to land a man on the moon ``before this decade is out,'' the program's last mission ended in December, 1972, with the splashdown of Apollo 17. Diary-like reports mix with first- and third-person accounts as Chaikin, an editor at Sky & Telescope magazine, delivers a chronological view of the missions and those who planned and flew them. Focusing closely on the Apollo astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin, Pete Conrad and Neil Armstrong, Chaikin gives his topic a sense of immediacy. But his treatment, lengthy as it is, reads more like an extended magazine article. Missing is a view of Apollo in a wider context, one that captures the mythos of our efforts to land on the moon. 40,000 first printing. (June)

Science writer Chaikin spent eight years interviewing dozens of NASA flight controllers, engineers, technicians, and especially all 23 surviving astronauts who flew missions to the moon during the Apollo program. Fleshed out with never-before-published conversations taken from declassified on-board voice recorders, his book provides a vivid account of the first era of manned lunar exploration. Published to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the first landing, Chaikin's insightful telling refreshes the oft-repeated stories of these pioneering flights with new details, anecdotes, and reflections that convey what the experience was like for the astronauts. He also shows that, paradoxically for one of the most intensively reported stories of its time, how little we really understood what happened on that July night in 1969. Reminiscent of Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox's superb Apollo: The Race to the Moon (LJ 6/15/89), this is a highly recommended purchase for both public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/94; see also Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton's Moon Shot, LJ 4/15/94.-Ed.]-Thomas J. Frieling, Bainbridge Coll., Ga.