biblio

SP-4223 "Before This Decade Is Out..."

[379-385] An Annotated Project Apollo Bibliography

Armstrong, Neil A. et al. First on the Moon: A Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. Written with Gene Farmer and Dora Jane Hamblin. Epilogue by Arthur C. Clarke. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. This is the "official" memoir of the Apollo 11 landing mission to the Moon in 1969. Contains much personal information about the astronauts that is not available elsewhere.
-. The First Lunar Landing: 20th Anniversary/as Told by the Astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, Michael Collins. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration EP-73, 1989. This is a short recollection of the Apollo 11 mission by the astronauts.
Atkinson, Joseph D., Jr., and Shafritz, Jay M. The Real Stuff: A History of the NASA Astronaut Requirements Program. New York: Praeger Pubs., 1985. The authors present a solid overview of the selection of the NASA astronauts and their development.
Benson, Charles D. and Faherty, William Barnaby. Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration SP-4204, 1978. An excellent history of the design and construction of the lunar launch facilities at Kennedy Space Center.
Bergaust, Erik. Murder on Pad 34. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1968. A highly-critical account of the investigation of the Apollo 204 accident in January 1967 that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White.
Bilstein, Roger E. Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration SP-4206, 1980. This thorough and well-written book gives a detailed but highly readable account of the enormously complex process whereby NASA and especially the Marshall Space Flight Center under the direction of Wernher von Braun developed the launch vehicles used in the Apollo program ultimately to send 12 humans to the Moon.
Booker, Peter Jeffrey; Frewer, G.C.; and, Pardoe, G.K.C. Project Apollo: The Way to the Moon. New York: American Elsevier Pub. Co., 1969. A popular and readable account prepared in anticipation of and released just after the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, this book condenses the essential details of 10 years of American space activities into a short narrative.
Borman, Frank. Countdown: An Autobiography. New York: William Morrow, Silver Arrow Books, 1988. With Robert J. Serling. Written to appear on the twentieth anniversary of the first lunar landing, this autobiography spans much more than the Apollo program.
Breuer, William B. Race to the Moon: America's Duel with the Soviets. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993. This book, written by a journalist who has made a career out of writing World War II adventures, is neither about the race to the Moon, nor the U.S. rivalry with the U.S.S.R. The majority of it is, instead, about the World War II efforts of the German rocket team under Wernher von Braun at Peenemuende, their wartime exploits, their surrender to American forces in 1945, and their post-war activities in the U.S.
Brooks, Courtney G., Grimwood, James M., and Swenson, Loyd S., Jr. Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft. Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration SP-4205, 1979. The authors of this book describe the development of the spacecraft used in Project Apollo.
Collins, Michael. Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974. This is the first candid book about life as an astronaut, written by the member of the Apollo 11 crew that remained in orbit around the Moon. The author comments on other astronauts, describes the seemingly endless preparations for flights to the Moon, and assesses the results.
-. Liftoff: The Story of America's Adventure in Space. New York: Grove Press, 1988. A general history of the U.S. space program for a popular audience written by a former astronaut, begins with an account by one of the three participating astronauts of the Apollo 11 flight. He then flashes back to the post-World War II beginnings of the United States' interest in space and traces the evolution of the space program through the history of the Apollo program.
Compton, W. David. Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration SP-4214, 1989. This clearly-written account traces the ways in which scientists with interests in the Moon and engineers concerned with landing people on the Earth's satellite resolved their differences of approach and carried out a mission that made major contributions to science and developed remarkable engineering achievements.
Cooper, Henry S.F. Apollo on the Moon. New York: Dial Press, 1969. In this book Cooper predicts, before the landing of Apollo 11 astronauts on the Moon in July 1969, what they would encounter. More important, he follows the preparations for the mission with great skill and recounts them in his personal and scintillating style. A small work, this book is barely 140 pages and is taken almost verbatim from two of Cooper's New Yorker articles.
-. Moon Rocks. New York: Dial Press, 1970. This is an informal account of the first investigating team's examining the lunar samples at Houston.
-. Thirteen: The Flight that Failed. New York: Dial Press, 1973. A lively account of the nearly-disastrous flight of Apollo 13.
Fries, Sylvia D. NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration SP-4104, 1992. This book is a sociocultural analysis of a selection of engineers at NASA who worked on Project Apollo.
Furniss, Tim, "One Small Step"-The Apollo Missions, the Astronauts, the Aftermath: A Twenty Year Perspective. Somerset, England: G.T. Foulis & Co., 1989. Developed as a retrospective celebration on the twentieth anniversary of the lunar landing, this book tries to recreate the exhilaration of the Apollo missions.
Gray, Mike. Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1992. This is a lively journalistic account of the career of Harrison Storms, president of the Aerospace Division of North American Aviation that built the Apollo capsule.
Hallion, Richard P., and Crouch, Tom D. Editor. Apollo: Ten Years Since Tranquility Base. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979. This is a collection of essays developed for the National Air and Space Museum, commemorating the tenth anniversary of man's first landing on the Moon, July 20, 1969.
Hoyt, Edwin P. The Space Dealers: A Hard Look at the Role of Business in the U.S. Space Effort. New York: The John Day Co., 1971. This book describes the intricate interrelationships between government organizations such as NASA and the aerospace industry. Not specifically focused on Project Apollo, it uses it as a test case in looking at the larger question of government/industry relations.
Kennan, Erlend A., and Harvey, Edmund H., Jr. Mission to the Moon: A Critical Examination of NASA and the Space Program. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1969. This book features a detailed examination of the facts of the Apollo 204 fire in January 1967 that killed three astronauts. It does not provide a balanced account of the lunar landing program or NASA. Instead it is filled with critical asides.
Launius, Roger D. NASA: A History of the U.S. Civil Space Program. Melbourne, FL: Krieger, 1994. A short book in the Anvil Series, this history of U.S. civilian space efforts consists half of narrative and half of documents. It contains three chapters on the Apollo program, but while coverage consists more of overview than detailed analysis, the approach is broadly analytical and provides the most recent general treatment of its topic.
Lewis, Richard S. Appointment on the Moon: The Inside Story of America's Space Adventure. New York: Viking, 1969. Perhaps the first book to capitalize on the success of Apollo 11 in 1969, this history appeared within days of the "splashdown."
Logsdon, John M. The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1970. This book describes in detail the political issue of how the United States decided to go to the Moon in 1961.
McDougall, Walter A., . . .The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. New York: Basic Books, 1985. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book analyzes the space race to the Moon.
Mailer, Norman. Of a Fire on the Moon. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970. New York: New American Library, 1971. One of the foremost American writers, Mailer was commissioned to write about the first lunar landing. But he was forced, grudgingly, to admit that NASA's approach to task accomplishment-which he sees as the embodiment of the Protestant Work Ethic-and its technological and scientific capability got results with Apollo.
Mansfield, John M. Man on the Moon. New York: Stein and Day, 1969. Written by a BBC television producer, this book begins with ancient conceptions of the Moon and continues with theoretical foundations for the space age in their works of science fiction authors and theoreticians. The book's capstone is a discussion of NASA and Project Apollo.
Masursky, Harold; Colton, G.W.; and El-Baz, Farouk. Apollo Over the Moon: A View from Orbit. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration SP-362, 1978. This is an excellent encapsulation of the Apollo program with striking photography.
Murray, Charles A., and Cox, Catherine Bly. Apollo, the Race to the Moon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989. Perhaps the best general account of the lunar program, this history uses interviews and documents to reconstruct the stories of the people who participated in Apollo.
Rabinowitch, Eugene, and Lewis, Richard S. Editors. Man on the Moon: The Impact on Science, Technology, and International Cooperation. New York: Basic Books, 1969. The editors have assembled articles that provide a range of views on the impact of the exploration of space on science, technology, and international cooperation. Each author approaches the subject from their own perspective, speculating on the meaning of the Apollo lunar landing and offering prognostications for the future.
Thomas, Davis. Editor. Moon: Man's Greatest Adventure. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1970. A large-format, illustrated work, the centerpiece of this book are three major essays. One, by Fred A. Whipple, Harvard University astronomer, describes the possibilities of space flight for scientific inquiry. Another by Silvio A. Bedini, Smithsonian Institution, deals with the Moon's role in human affairs. A final article by Wernher von Braun, of NASA, analyzes Project Apollo and its execution in the 1960s.
von Braun, Wernher. First Men to the Moon. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966. A popular account of Apollo based of a series of articles appearing in This Week magazine. Its greatest strength is the inclusion of easily understood diagrams of scientific phenomena and hardware.
Wilford, John Noble. We Reach the Moon: The New York Times Story of Man's Greatest Adventure. New York: Bantam Books, 1969. One of the earliest of the journalistic accounts to appear at the time of Apollo 11, a key feature of this general and journeyman but not distinguished history is a 64-page color insert with photographs of the mission. It was prepared by the science writer of the New York Times using his past articles.
Young, Hugo, Silcock, Bryan, and Dunn, Peter. Journey to Tranquillity: The History of Man's Assault on the Moon. London: Cape, 1969. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970. A ponderous "anti-Apollo" broadside, this book seeks to cast aspersions on the entire space program.