In the Shadow of the Moon

A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969

Francis French and Colin Burgess

With a foreword by Walter Cunningham

Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight Series

464 pages
25 illustrations

Paperback

June 2010

978-0-8032-2979-2

$24.95 Add to Cart

eBook (PDF)

(Requires Adobe Digital Editions)

September 2007

978-0-8032-0984-8

$24.95 Add to Cart

about author bio praise table of contents media awards

About the Book

In the Shadow of the Moon tells the story of the most exciting and challenging years in spaceflight, with two superpowers engaged in a titanic struggle to land one of their own people on the moon. Drawing on interviews with astronauts, cosmonauts, their families, technicians, and scientists, as well as rarely seen Soviet and American government documents, the authors craft a remarkable story of the golden age of spaceflight as both an intimate human experience and a rollicking global adventure. From the Gemini flights to the Soyuz space program to the earliest Apollo missions, including the legendary first moon landing, their book draws a richly detailed picture of the space race as an endeavor equally endowed with personal meaning and political significance.

Purchase the audio edition.

Author Bio

Francis French is the director of education at the San Diego Air and Space Museum and the coauthor with Colin Burgess of Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961–1965, available in a Bison Books edition. Colin Burgess is a former flight service director with Qantas Airways and the editor of Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969–1975 (Nebraska 2010). Walter Cunningham was a NASA astronaut from 1963 to 1971 and a crew member on the first manned Apollo flight.

Praise

“[A] readable introduction to the first years of America’s leap into space.”—Publishers Weekly

"Authors Burgess and French are even-handed and equitable, and have done an excellent job in covering a vast expanse of material. . . . The opportunity to get the true stories from the astronauts themselves is a luxury that will sadly not be available forever, and In the Shadow of the Moon has done an excellent job in gathering and eliciting the stories of these men, not just the 'official reports,' but the personal touches that render them more human. . . . The authors have a touch for weaving revealing and captivating personal narratives amidst the nuts-and-bolts space history."—Michael Patrick Brady, PopMatters.com

“French and Burgess present a first-rate, detailed, and very personal account of the space race to the moon . . . . Strongly recommended both as a study of the social interactions among this unique group of people and as a gripping series of anecdotes that describe the exciting, dangerous steps behind the successful moon landing.”—CHOICE

"This book has everything you ever wanted to know about the astronauts that paved the way for the first Moon landing. Rarely does one get the entire information of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programmes, encased in one book, about the men who entered the dangerous and untried realm of flying off the Earth."—Jeff Green, Liftoff

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Acknowledgments

1. Gemini Raises the Bar

2. A Rendezvous in Space

3. The Ballet of Weightlessness

4. The Risk Stuff

5. The Astronaut Enigma

6. Starting Over

7. Leaving the Good Earth

8. A Test Pilot's Dream

9. The Highest Mountain