Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon

Atlanta, GA: Turner Publishing, Inc, 1994. First Edition, Second Printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. 383, [1] pages. Illustrations. Index. Introduction by Neil Armstrong. Signed by the author (Alan Shepard) on the title page. Some DJ damp rippling and some top edge damp staining. Rear Admiral Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (November 18, 1923 - July 21, 1998) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and businessman. In 1961 he became the first American to travel into space, and in 1971 he walked on the Moon. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Shepard became a naval aviator in 1946, and a test pilot in 1950. He was selected as one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts in 1959, and in May 1961 he made the first manned Project Mercury flight, MR-3, in a spacecraft he named Freedom 7. His craft entered space, but was not capable of achieving orbit. He became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space, and the first space traveler to manually control the orientation of his craft. Shepard was designated as the commander of the first manned Project Gemini mission, but was grounded in 1963 due to Ménière's disease. This was surgically corrected in 1969, and in 1971, Shepard commanded the Apollo 14 mission, piloting the Apollo Lunar Module Antares to the most accurate landing of the Apollo missions. At age 47, he became the oldest person to walk on the Moon, and the only one of the Mercury Seven astronauts to do so. Donald Kent "Deke" Slayton (March 1, 1924 - June 13, 1993) was a United States Air Force pilot, aeronautical engineer, and test pilot who was selected as one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts. He went on to become NASA's first Chief of the Astronaut Office and Director of Flight Crew Operations, responsible for NASA crew assignments. Jay Barbree (November 26, 1933 - May 14, 2021) was an American correspondent for NBC News, focusing on space travel. He was the only journalist to have covered every non-commercial human space mission in the United States, beginning with the first American in space, Alan Shepard aboard Freedom 7 in 1961, continuing through to the last mission of the Space Shuttle, Atlantis's STS-135 mission in July 2011. He was present for all 135 Space Shuttle launches, and every manned launch for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo eras. In all, he witnessed 166 human space launches. Howard Benedict chronicled the triumphs and tragedies of America's journey into space in three decades as the award-winning aerospace writer for The Associated Press, Derived from a Kirkus review: The story of America's space race with the Soviet Union and the scramble to put a man on the moon, by two who were there. Shepard and Slayton, both Mercury Seven astronauts. It begins with an account of the Eagle's landing on the moon's surface, then backtracks to the beginning of the superpower missile competition in the late 1940s. They point out that the US missile expertise was set up in Huntsville, Ala., by Wernher von Braun, the German missile genius captured from the defeated Third Reich. A German team constructed the Redstone and Jupiter rockets. The American public was traumatized by a 1,000-pound Soviet satellite zooming across its airspace, and von Braun got the green light to launch a smaller American satellite at once. The authors turn to the later Apollo missions, which they cover in detail, as well as the eventual Soyuz-Apollo mission, a Soviet-US cooperative effort. Interesting historical material is related, complete with dramatic re-enactments, as if the writing committee -- there are four listed authors -- had decided they needed swashbuckling prose to enliven the material. Moon Shot quite readable and detailed.