I thought it would be interesting to publish a list of some of the Apollo books and stuff I’ve collected over the years. I can recommend just about anything on this list, but top 5? Here’s a first stab, but I might change my mind:
- Apollo: the race to the Moon [the story of the engineers and managers of the Apollo program]
- Carrying the Fire [Mike Collins’ experiences of the Gemini/Apollo programs]
- A Man on the Moon [Andrew Chaikin’s famed history of Apollo. HBO’s From the Earth to the Moon was based on this]
- Full Moon [one of the most beautiful books: a collection of Apollo photographs]
- First Man [the only official biography of Neil Armstrong]
I’ll have a look at DVDs in the same way sometime perhaps, but what’s missing from my collection that is a must read?
Title |
Author |
| A Man on the Moon | Andrew Chaikin |
| Apollo | Al Bean |
| Apollo: the Race to the Moon |
Charles Murray & Catherine Bly Cox |
| Apollo 11:1 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo 11:2 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo 12 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo 13 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo 15:1 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo 16:1 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo 17:1 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo Orbiting Moon, Heads Back Today | (newspaper original edition) |
| Astronomy Now: Man on the Moon 30th Anniversary | (magazine) |
| Carrying the Fire | Michael Collins |
| Facsimile: Guardian 21/07/69 | Front Page |
| First Man | James R Hansen |
| Friendship 7 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Full Moon | Michael Light |
| History of the 20th Century: Man in Space: A New age of discovery | (magazine) |
| Life: To the Moon and back | (magazine) |
| Lost Moon: the perilous voyage of Apollo 13 | Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger |
| Moon Map | Philip’s |
| Moondust | Andrew Smith |
| NASA LM Chart Series: 1: 1 000 000 | NASA |
| On Mars | Patrick Moore |
| On the Moon | Patrick Moore |
| Project Apollo | Charles Coombs |
| Project Constellation | Tim McElyea |
| Rocketman | Nancy Conrad & Howard A Klausner |
| Saturn V News Reference | NASA (printed from website) |
| Spaceflight Jan 1968 |
British Interplanetary Society magazine |
| The Last Man on the Moon | Eugene Cernan & Don Davis |
| The Man Who Ran the Moon | Piers Bizony |
| Virtual Apollo | Scott P Sullivan |
| Virtual LM | Scott P Sullivan |
Hammer and Feather 
April 16, 2008 at 03:44 |
I appreciated your recent book suggestions on my blog. I’ve already ordered both Apollo by Murray & Cox and The Man Who Ran the Moon. Thanks! A good book I can recommend is “Flight: My Life in Mission Control” by Christopher Kraft. It is a surprisingly honest and interesting book. Kraft doesn’t pull any punches when he speaks about who he respected and who he didn’t.
I’ve also read “Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun” by Bob War. It added some flavor to the Apollo story but nothing too unique (though reading about von Braun’s fascinating life story was well worth the read ). I also believe I enjoyed “Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond” by Gene Kratz, but it’s been a long time since I read that it.
April 16, 2008 at 13:42 |
After mentioning those books to you I was inspired to list my bookshelf! I’ve been eyeing up Kraft’s book – it’s now next on my list. I also read Krantz’s book a while ago – it must have been a library copy – and enjoyed that. He gave a good flavour of the early development of Mission Control during the Mercury days.
Now you’ve jogged my memory: Space Race by Deborah Cadbury (the rivalry between von Braun and Korolev) and Two Sides of the Moon by Dave Scott and Alexei Leonov (taking it in turns to recall events during the Space Race) make really good reads. Again, I must have borrowed from the library. I can’t afford to buy all the books I read!