Craig Nelson is the author of The First Heroes and Thomas Paine, which won the 2007 Henry Adams Prize for the year's best book on history and government. His writing has appeared in many publications and he has been profiled in Variety, Interview, Publishers Weekly and Time Out. He lives in Greenwich Village, New York.
I was there, kneeling, unable to breathe, before a television screen, watching Armstrong step off Eagle onto the regolith. I read [Rocket Men] in the same mood of boyhood wonder. So should you - Sunday Times Anyone with an ounce of poetry in their soul would have to concede that reaching the moon really was a giant leap for mankind. For the sheer drama, majesty and improbability of it all, it s a story that will be told time and time again. But rarely as well as this - The Sunday Business Post'Spectacular' - Vanity Fair'With Nelson s impeccable research, his ability to tie the myriad strings of the space race into a coherent whole and the power of the story itself, Rocket Men should be at the top of your book list' - New Scientist Rocket Men is particularly good at unpicking the tangle of motives behind kennedy s decision to send a man to the moon ... A punchy, popular history ... gripping, geekily detailed accounts of what it was like to ride a Saturn V or walk on another planet are interspersed with an equally lively take on the cold war strategising behind the mission - Financial Times As good an introduction as any to mankind s greatest adventure - BBC History Magazine'Craig Nelson tells the tale in a way that seizes the spirit of the age' - London Review of Books
I was there, kneeling, unable to breathe, before a television screen, watching Armstrong step off Eagle onto the regolith. I read [Rocket Men] in the same mood of boyhood wonder. So should you - Sunday Times Anyone with an ounce of poetry in their soul would have to concede that reaching the moon really was a giant leap for mankind. For the sheer drama, majesty and improbability of it all, it s a story that will be told time and time again. But rarely as well as this - The Sunday Business Post'Spectacular' - Vanity Fair'With Nelson s impeccable research, his ability to tie the myriad strings of the space race into a coherent whole and the power of the story itself, Rocket Men should be at the top of your book list' - New Scientist Rocket Men is particularly good at unpicking the tangle of motives behind kennedy s decision to send a man to the moon ... A punchy, popular history ... gripping, geekily detailed accounts of what it was like to ride a Saturn V or walk on another planet are interspersed with an equally lively take on the cold war strategising behind the mission - Financial Times As good an introduction as any to mankind s greatest adventure - BBC History Magazine'Craig Nelson tells the tale in a way that seizes the spirit of the age' - London Review of Books
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. In this extensively researched account of that epic achievement, former publishing executive and prize-winning author Nelson (The First Heroes) moves seamlessly between Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, their nervous families and the equally nervous NASA ground crew. Nelson follows Armstrong in nail-biting detail as he tries to find a place to land with less than a minute's worth of fuel remaining. A large central section of the book digresses to provide some backstory on the feverish American-Soviet game of one-upmanship in the year leading up to the Apollo 11 launch. For instance, Nelson describes Apollo 8 as an almost reckless gamble by NASA to beat the Russians in sending men to orbit the moon The book also describes the sad personal toll the mission took. Collins was best able to deal with the cost of fame yet expressed the anticlimax of life after Apollo 11: "I seem gripped by earthly ennui." Space fans and readers who remember that momentous time will find this an exciting read. (June 29) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
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