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Another superlative effort by French and Burgess. The legacy of Apollo is only as strong as the rigorous record. This book is especially valuable for telling readers about Bill Anders, Rusty Schweickart and Donn Eisele, whose contributions were essential to the Apollo program but whose stories might have been overshadowed before. It's hard to believe for space enthusiasts, but memory sometimes fails even for events so recent. Had Francis and Colin not captured all this so very well a great deal might have been lost. Kudos and sincere thanks.
There are political histories, largely concerned with the Cold War or with NASA bureaucratic maneuvering. There are chronicles of events. There have been many books about the history of the Apollo program, most of them with a limited focus. But there are very few broad, deep, and balanced histories of Apollo that do justice to its human dramas. There are memoirs and biographies of the astronauts. There are accounts focused on the technology. This book is a rich history of Apollo that never forgets that it was all about people. It started with ancient human dreams about the moon, it was full of interesting characters and dramas, and in the end it offered a vision of life on Earth far greater than the nationalistic rivalries that gave it momentum.
Time has loosened their lips and by the year 2000, many of them were willing to give an honest and no holds barred assessment of their former peers. Some have been outstanding, like Murray & Cox's "Apollo: the Race to the Moon" and Chaikin's definitive "A Man on the Moon", and some have been awful like Alan Shepard's ghost-written "Moonshot". It benefitted the other astronauts in allowing them to get their own divorces once the barrier had first been breached by Eisele. I'm happy to say that "In the Shadow of the Moon" is very much in the mold of the former.
This is a well-deserved spotlight for a program that is often completely overshadowed by Apollo. Beyond being a carefully researched and accurate account of the Gemini and Apollo missions leading up to the first landing, it adds much to what's known about the behind the scenes social drama of "astronaut politics".While paying reasonable attention to some of the technical aspects of early spaceflight, French and Burgess choose to focus more on the social interplay between the astronauts, what made each one different, who had what strengths and weaknesses, who knew how to play the political game to position themselves for a choice flight assignment and who didn't. Best of all, they're not guessing here -- their text comes from extensive interviews with many of the astronauts themselves. Since you're reading this review, and this is a somewhat obscure book, I'll assume that you're like me: you've read a lot of books covering the history of the Apollo Project already. Frequently, competence demonstrated in Gemini was the determining factor in deciding who got assigned to what position in Apollo. Among other things, his divorce was a contributing factor to his never having flown again.
Both his former and second wives provided quite a bit of detail to the researchers here. The authors also draw extensively from the best of the previously released histories to fill in the gaps where their own research didn't provide complete coverage -- something that's clear from the impressively lengthy bibliography.Another nice aspect of this book is that they pay a lot of attention to Project Gemini -- probably half the book.
The only weak spot in this book is the chapter on the Soviet space program during the same era. Still others have been middle-of-the-road -- competent but unremarkable accounts that offer little to what's already widely known.
Of course, Apollo would never have been possible without the knowledge gained during Gemini. Interested readers get some real gems here including (are you ready for this).
an entire chapter on Donn Eisele(). They include it for that reason, but also because it's impossible to tell a personality-based story of the astronauts without covering their experiences during their first flights.
It lacked much of the impact of the rest of the book and I raced to get through it so that I could return to "the good stuff".
The exploration of the moon was mankind's greatest adventure and its greatest achievement during a time of international tension. If you want to know about the voyages of the Lunar astronauts during the golden age of space flight, read this book. The benefits of the lunar landings, in terms of the technology and management system that were developed gave us a quantum leap in capability and understanding. Francis and Colin capture not only the hard detail of lunar flights, but also the human side of the living and working in space. What is it like to fly to the moon and how we as humans do it. Thanks to Francis and Colin for making this all much clearer and understandable to us all. I know, I was there.
For enthusiasts of the entire space push of the 60's, this book is an excellent and thorough review of the space flights and the exceptional individuals who gave their all for their country's moon goals.The author delves deep into the Gemini flights in particular, and provides some very interesting personal and mission info, including detailed accounts of the ongoing Soviet missions being conducted in parallel to the US effort.For those like me that are craving to know the history of the early NASA flights up to Apollo 11, and the individuals that made them successful, I highly recommend this book.
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