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Title: Genesis : The Story Of Apollo 8 by Robert Zimmerman ISBN: 0-440-23556-1 Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 01 December, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.91 (32 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The 60's Revisited
Comment: This was a very well written book. Personally, I've always been interested in astronomy and space flight whether they were American or Soviet space missions. The 60's were a time of tension and revolutionary fervor. Many aspects of life all around the world underwent profound change; the effects of which can still be felt today. It was upon this backdrop that Robert Zimmerman explained the story of Apollo 8. In 1961, President Kennedy called upon the science community to devise the necessary methods to "land a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth before this decade is out." From that moment onward, the space race began in earnest. Zimmerman did a fabulous job explaining the technical achievements that made Apollo 8 possible while keeping the reader glued to the pages by providing detailed accounts of the political climate of the time. With each progression of the story, the personal lives of the major players are revealed as well as the circumstances of the day. Premier Khrushchev led a vigorous space campaign to outdo the Americans in the race to the moon. The story is interspersed with detailed descriptions of the erection of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Vietnam War and the social upheaval in the cities of America as a result. All the while, there was a segment of American society that was dedicated to fulfilling President Kennedy's dream of a moon landing. Apollo 8 was the first major step toward that goal. This was the first time that a manned mission left the influence of the Earth to enter the Lunar environment while traveling at tremendous speeds. The "Earthrise" photograph still enjoys popularity today as it was originally captured by Bill Anders onboard the spacecraft. This was a very well written book and is highly recommended. Of course the very title of the book places its primary focus on the mission of Apollo 8 to orbit the moon; it also provides insight into other pertinent areas of interest. The currently unfoding story of the international space station and the space probes visiting the celestial bodies of the solar system owe, in large part, their existence to the success of the Apollo 8 mission which is described in very interesting detail.
Rating: 4
Summary: A first rate, well written, historical book.
Comment: I enjoyed Mr. Zimmerman's "Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8" very much. I feel it is a first rate historical book. It was well written, was easy to read and comprehend, and even more so, interesting to read. I learned more about this particular mission then I ever knew before, and rightly so. The vast majority of Americans, during this era, never really knew who these men were and in a way, still don't. Only through writers like Mr. Zimmerman, can readers learn more in depth details about these men, what the endured and even more so, what their wives and children endured.
This insight, the lives of these particular astronauts and their families, was especially interesting to me.
I am old enough, 46 to be exact, to barely remember the beginning of the space program. I was too young to comprehend at the time why it was happening, but I remember. I remember President Kennedy's speech about landing a man on the moon and returning said man to the earth before the decade was over. That speech was given in 1961.
For those of us who are old enough to remember this era, this book will certainly bring back memories and allow the reader to learn more than that person knew at the time it was all happening. For those readers whom were born after this period, this book should give them some historical insight to this era and especially to this particular mission.
Before I composed this review, I first read what the other reviewers had to say. I feel the person who gave Mr. Zimmerman a two star rating, was being too critical. He stated that half the book was about the flight and the other half was about the "Cold War" and religious insights of the astronauts. I'm sorry this person felt this way, because if it had not been for the "Cold War", I am not so sure that any human being from earth would have walked on the moon even as early as 1969. The "Cold War", which of course was between the soviet Union and the United States, drove the space race as Mr. Zimmerman described it. The "Cold War" issues, which really were not half of the book, had to be a part of his book. Read "Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon", co-written by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, two of the original seven astronauts. It also has "Cold War" issues interwoven into the story.
As for the religious insights of the three astronauts, remember, this book is about these three men. However religious each man was, that aspect also needed to be a part of his book. I certainly did not feel that these religious insights dimished the story in any manner. After all, the title of the book, "Genesis", is also the first book in the bible. This mission was also a first. The first time that man had broken the grasp of earth's gravitational pull, and was to circle another heavenly body. These three men, were risking their lives to do what no man had ever done before. Therefore I feel it was appropriate that those passages read from "Genesis" by each man had significant meaning and in fact, maybe what the mission was all about.
Rating: 1
Summary: Irrational, historically myopic American triumphalism
Comment: This is one of the most disappointing books about the space program I've ever read. Zimmerman turns one of the seminal technological triumphs in the history of the human species--the first lunar voyage, performed by the astronauts of Apollo 8 in December, 1968--into a quasi-spiritual event that somehow proves that God helped America win the Cold War against the Soviets. The book reads like a gloating celebration of American power and religious piety over Soviet impotence and atheistic error. While the Cold War context for the Apollo program is an important topic in any well-researched and written history of the American space program of the 1960s, Zimmerman goes way overboard. He sees the flight of Apollo 8 purely in terms of the Cold War, which he in turns treats as part of some kind of spiritual warfare between atheistic communism and the God-fearing forces of capitalism and democracy. His is a gross oversimplification of both the Cold War and the Space Race. In sum, this book is not worth reading if you are a serious student of the history of the space program.
If you're looking for a good historical account of the flight of Apollo 8, sans the religious and political ranting and chest-thumping, I'd recommend Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon," and Lovell and Kluger's "Lost Moon."
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Title: This New Ocean : The Story of the First Space Age by William E. Burrows ISBN: 0375754857 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 05 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir by Jerry M. Linenger ISBN: 007137230X Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Books Pub. Date: 12 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles by Roger E. Bilstein ISBN: 0813026911 Publisher: University Press of Florida Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Apollo 8: The NASA Mission Reports (Apogee Books Space Series) by Robert Godwin, Apogee Books ISBN: 1896522661 Publisher: Collectors Guide Publishing, Inc. Pub. Date: August, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel by Robert Zimmerman ISBN: 0309085489 Publisher: Joseph Henry Press Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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