American Moonshot: JFK and the Great Space Race
Douglas Brinkley

It's a big book and covers how we got there, From Goddard through JFK and Von Braun to Armstrong and Nixon

If like me you are a baby boomer, it will bring back memories forgotten, like standing in the front yard with neighbors when I was just short of 4 years old (my oldest retained memory) craning my neck looking into the blue sky of northern MN trying to get a glimpse of Sputnik. I had no idea what it was other than it looked like a star and the feeling I got from the adults that it was both important and somewhat frightening.

Or the memory as a schoolboy of how the world could end at any moment in a blink of an eye, and watching Project Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo live.

If you are not a baby boomer, this book might make you realize the issues facing the US today are miniscule, and sadly, our achievements as well.

I've been watching a lot of documentaries on the space program lately with all the buzz about the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. One not to miss is called Apollo 11. It's a new doc produced by CNN. I watched a new 4 part series called The Apollo Chronicles on WGN yesterday which was very good and gets behind the scenes a lot.

As for this book, I just might have to pick it up, thanks! BTW, I was 9 yrs. old when the moon landing occurred. I remember building a model of the Lunar Module. It was captivating stuff back then and a huge distraction from the turmoil going on in the world then.

it's more about how the moon shot came about, what's interesting about this book is that you will learn things you never knew

for example, fake news has been around for a long time, anybody remember the missile gap? JFK was largely responsible for this myth, and Nixon couldn't prove him wrong because it was classified info that he couldn't divulge, pure genius on JFK's part, at least in a devilish way

in fact the USSR had far fewer ICBM's, and at one point they had less than a dozen operational despite JFK's claim they had hundreds