Impressively researched and stylishly written, the history of the space race achieves liftoff.
The Cold War countdown to Apollo.
Wedged between NASA’s Mercury program, which rocketed the first Americans into space, and Apollo, which left their footprints on the moon, was Gemini—a 12-mission program that ran from 1961 to 1966. Kluger, a Time magazine editor at large, believes this “middle sibling of the manned space program” has been overshadowed for too long—in part by Kluger’s own work; his 1994 Lost Moon (written with astronaut Jim Lovell) formed the basis of the film Apollo 13. Now Kluger has rendered Gemini equally cinematic. His page-turning prose is written with new journalistic bravado that perfectly captures “a nation that wanted to think of its astronauts as a robust breed of men who ate well, trained hard, flew straight, and came home.” The book has its share of colorful figures—there’s John Glenn, camera ready; Neil Armstrong, haunted by his daughter’s death; Chris Kraft barking orders from mission control—but lacks a main character to hold things together as the narrative launches from one mission to the next. The real throughline is the Cold War. Political panic triggered by Sputnik was the fuel in Gemini’s rockets. Kluger makes palpable President Kennedy’s distress when, in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin beat Alan Shepard into space. The U.S. was still trying to get an edge over the Soviets during Gemini 8 when, for heart-pounding pages, Armstrong and Dave Scott’s spacecraft spun out of control—a short circuit in the thruster system—and the astronauts fought to steady the ship as they slipped out of consciousness, a tense scene that ends in an early splashdown. But Gemini was a grand success. “Sixteen men had gone into space across ten crewed missions—and sixteen had come home.” They’d demonstrated all the skills that would take NASA to the moon, contributing, Kluger writes, “to a cascading series of economic, engineering, and political victories that helped bring the original Cold War to a peaceful end.”
Impressively researched and stylishly written, the history of the space race achieves liftoff.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781250323002
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
A straightforward, carefully detailed presentation of how ``fruit comes from flowers,'' from winter's snow-covered buds through pollination and growth to ripening and harvest. Like the text, the illustrations are admirably clear and attractive, including the larger-than-life depiction of the parts of the flower at different stages. An excellent contribution to the solidly useful ``Let's-Read-and-Find-Out-Science'' series. (Nonfiction/Picture book. 4-9)
Pub Date: Jan. 30, 1992
ISBN: 0-06-020055-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1991
Yes: it's high time for a de-romanticized, de-mythified, close-up retelling of the U.S. Space Program's launching—the inside story of those first seven astronauts.
But no: jazzy, jivey, exclamation-pointed, italicized Tom Wolfe "Mr. Overkill" hasn't really got the fight stuff for the job. Admittedly, he covers all the ground. He begins with the competitive, macho world of test pilots from which the astronauts came (thus being grossly overqualified to just sit in a controlled capsule); he follows the choosing of the Seven, the preparations for space flight, the flights themselves, the feelings of the wives; and he presents the breathless press coverage, the sudden celebrity, the glorification. He even throws in some of the technology. But instead of replacing the heroic standard version with the ring of truth, Wolfe merely offers an alternative myth: a surreal, satiric, often cartoony Wolfe-arama that, especially since there isn't a bit of documentation along the way, has one constantly wondering if anything really happened the way Wolfe tells it. His astronauts (referred to as "the brethren" or "The True Brothers") are obsessed with having the "right stuff" that certain blend of guts and smarts that spells pilot success. The Press is a ravenous fool, always referred to as "the eternal Victorian Gent": when Walter Cronkite's voice breaks while reporting a possible astronaut death, "There was the Press the Genteel Gent, coming up with the appropriate emotion. . . live. . . with no prompting whatsoever!" And, most off-puttingly, Wolfe presumes to enter the minds of one and all: he's with near-drowing Gus Grissom ("Cox. . . That face up there!—it's Cox. . . Cox knew how to get people out of here! . . . Cox! . . ."); he's with Betty Grissom angry about not staying at Holiday Inn ("Now. . . they truly owed her"); and, in a crude hatchet-job, he's with John Glenn furious at Al Shepard's being chosen for the first flight, pontificating to the others about their licentious behavior, or holding onto his self-image during his flight ("Oh, yes! I've been here before! And I am immune! I don't get into corners I can't get out of! . . . The Presbyterian Pilot was not about to foul up. His pipeline to dear Lord could not be clearer"). Certainly there's much here that Wolfe is quite right about, much that people will be interested in hearing: the P-R whitewash of Grissom's foul-up, the Life magazine excesses, the inter-astronaut tensions. And, for those who want to give Wolfe the benefit of the doubt throughout, there are emotional reconstructions that are juicily shrill.
But most readers outside the slick urban Wolfe orbit will find credibility fatally undermined by the self-indulgent digressions, the stylistic excesses, and the broadly satiric, anti-All-American stance; and, though The Right Stuff has enough energy, sass, and dirt to attract an audience, it mostly suggests that until Wolfe can put his subject first and his preening writing-persona second, he probably won't be a convincing chronicler of anything much weightier than radical chic.
Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1979
ISBN: 0312427565
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1979
BOOK TO SCREEN
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