On 20 July 1969, man set foot on the moon. Motivated by politics, faith, science and wonder, the Apollo 11 mission was the greatest technical achievement of all time. It was the culmination of over a decade's worth of money and effort from more than 400,000 staff and crew.
Rocket Men follows the astounding story of the lunar project, beginning at its inception at the start of the Cold War and tracing it through to its finest hour with the first moon landing and the astronauts' safe return. Through extensive interviews with astronauts, NASA staff and their families and never-before published documents, Craig Nelson presents an awe-inspiring human account of the voyage that changed the course of history. He takes us behind the scenes at Mission Control to describe every detail of the mission, from the astronauts' moon excursion suits, which had five hundred parts and weighed no less than fifty pounds, to terrifying revelations, such as how Armstrong and Aldrin could have been left stranded on the moon when a vital switch snapped on the landing craft.
Rocket Men is the inside story of one of the most perilous and rewarding undertakings in history.
Rocket Men
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Revue de presse
'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 )'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 )'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 a masterful account of one of the most daring exploits in human civilisation.'
'Craig Nelson tells the tale in a way that seizes the spirit of the age'
(London Review of Books )'As good an introduction as any to mankind's greatest adventure'
(BBC History Magazine ) --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Broché .Biographie de l'auteur
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.
--Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Broché .
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Commentaires client les plus utiles
Par LeCyd
Format:Broché|Achat authentifié par Amazon
Le meilleur que j'ai eu la chance de lire sur le sujet de l'aventure spatiale. Absolument passionnant, de la fin de l'Allemagne nazie a la course américano-soviétique. Et l’après aussi... Chaudement recommandé.
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Amazon.com:
3.3 étoiles sur 5
69 commentaires
67 internautes sur 71 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile
2.0 étoiles sur 5
Entertaining, but full of errors
26 août 2009
Par Jason Godfrey
- Publié sur Amazon.com
Format:Relié
I saw in one of the reviews that in 40 years this book will be the book everyone turns to. I hope not, because that means there will be a lot of misinformed people in 40 years.
There are some good things about this book. It is an entertaining read. It provides context to events that is helpful. It also includes stories I hadn't heard before, which is refreshing. The problem is the book is full of errors, some showing a basic lack of understanding of the subject matter. It gets so bad I'm left wondering what in the book I can actually trust.
If you are new to the subject and want a good book to read, I recommend either Chris Kraft's or Gene Cernan's books.
I'll give it two stars since it is an enjoyable read.
Here is some errors I can think of off the top of my head. (I didn't want to put them in my main review.) It's not a complete list:
* Stating Gene Cernan was commander of Apollo 15, instead of 17
* A completely wrong description of what Max-Q is
* Confusing escape velocity and orbital speed.
* Calling the landing radar PGNS (which makes sense, since it is pronounced PINGS, but wrong)
* Stating that Armstrong used the Abort Guidance System to land, since he had to maneuver around some boulders. It wasn't.
That's just a few, and you may ask what the big deal with them is. The problem is that they are so pervasive it destroys the credibility of the author.
There are some good things about this book. It is an entertaining read. It provides context to events that is helpful. It also includes stories I hadn't heard before, which is refreshing. The problem is the book is full of errors, some showing a basic lack of understanding of the subject matter. It gets so bad I'm left wondering what in the book I can actually trust.
If you are new to the subject and want a good book to read, I recommend either Chris Kraft's or Gene Cernan's books.
I'll give it two stars since it is an enjoyable read.
Here is some errors I can think of off the top of my head. (I didn't want to put them in my main review.) It's not a complete list:
* Stating Gene Cernan was commander of Apollo 15, instead of 17
* A completely wrong description of what Max-Q is
* Confusing escape velocity and orbital speed.
* Calling the landing radar PGNS (which makes sense, since it is pronounced PINGS, but wrong)
* Stating that Armstrong used the Abort Guidance System to land, since he had to maneuver around some boulders. It wasn't.
That's just a few, and you may ask what the big deal with them is. The problem is that they are so pervasive it destroys the credibility of the author.
88 internautes sur 97 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile
3.0 étoiles sur 5
A riveting read marred by bizarre misinformation
18 juillet 2009
Par Otto Wood
- Publié sur Amazon.com
Format:Relié
This book is entertaining, imaginatively structured, and packed with information. Unfortunately, it's also riddled with errors. Some are just bizarre. On page 194, author Craig Nelson describes the first flight of the Saturn 5 in 1967, and he seems to have fallen into a parallel universe where the mission was a near disaster, instead of the "success on all accounts" described in Roger Bilstein's "Stages of Saturn" (accessible online). Here is what Nelson has to say: "On November 9 at 0700 EST, Apollo 4 launched. Two F-1 rockets abruptly quit during liftoff, at which the stack pulled a U-turn and headed screaming back at the ground. But the guidance system righted the vehicle, and the CM dummy capsule was successfully put into orbit." There are so many things wrong with that passage that it's hard to know where to begin. Suffice it to say that everything about the performance of the rocket is incorrect and could not possibly have happened as described. It shows a basic misunderstanding of the fundamentals of the subject, which Nelson displays over and over. Take his "essential formula for rocketry" on page 96: "combine liquid fuel, oxygen (for added power and to operate in a vacuum), and a flame to trigger an explosion of gases...." There are four errors: the fuel can be, and often is, solid; the oxidizer is not for "added power," it's indispensible for a reaction to occur at all (leaving aside the special case of a monopropellant); some propellants ignite without a flame (for example, in the CM and LM); finally, it's not an explosion. This is not nitpicking; it's rocketry 101. Later in this passage, Nelson calls liquid hydrogen an oxidizer (it's a fuel). Such sloppy writing occurs throughout the book, which obviously was not checked by relevant experts. Still, I think it deserves more than one star. I give it three because Nelson has told a familiar story in a fresh way, and he's assembled a kind of "greatest hits" from Apollo memoirs and oral histories. It's a good read, but let the reader beware!
27 internautes sur 27 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile
1.0 étoiles sur 5
For those who dismiss the technical inaccuracies as irrelevant..
19 février 2010
Par Stargazer
- Publié sur Amazon.com
Format:Relié
I have to say, the author CHOSE to write about an event which is intensely tied to technology. It is also a real event in history. If accuracy in the essential technological aspects is not important to Mr. Nelson, as a person writing history, he has made a poor choice of subject matter. If you purport to write history, there exists an obligation to do your research! Betraying the fact that he didn't, apparently, bother to research or have the technical aspects proofread, tells me that Nelson isn't committed to accuracy, and that is a cardinal sin for a historian!
That begs the question: What basis does this sloppy approach give me for believing that anything else, including the non-technical, presented in this work as fact is accurately portrayed?
I agree that there are engaging passages, and sometimes an interesting and unusual slant on events, but if you want an engaging, ACCURATE account of Apollo 11, read Mike Collin's "Carrying the Fire" (he really is the most literate of the moon voyagers, and the most dryly humorous) , or for the project as a whole through the eyes of the astronauts, Andrew Chaikin's superb "A Man on the Moon". "Rocket Men" is for me an interesting approach that needs a major overhaul to become a decent book.
That begs the question: What basis does this sloppy approach give me for believing that anything else, including the non-technical, presented in this work as fact is accurately portrayed?
I agree that there are engaging passages, and sometimes an interesting and unusual slant on events, but if you want an engaging, ACCURATE account of Apollo 11, read Mike Collin's "Carrying the Fire" (he really is the most literate of the moon voyagers, and the most dryly humorous) , or for the project as a whole through the eyes of the astronauts, Andrew Chaikin's superb "A Man on the Moon". "Rocket Men" is for me an interesting approach that needs a major overhaul to become a decent book.
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