[bksvol-discuss] astronaut book request: moondust
- From: "Cheryl Fogle" <cfogle@xxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 10:25:59 -0600
I'd love to read the following book if anyone wants to scan it. The author did
a really interesting radio interview awhile back.
Moondust
by Andrew Smith
ISBN:
0007155417
Format: Hardcover, 372pp
Pub. Date: August 2005
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Moondust
FROM OUR EDITORS
"Where do you go after you've been to the moon?" For most of us, this question
is purely hypothetical, but for 12 Americans, the conundrum was real. Journalist
Andrew Smith has tracked down all 9 surviving Apollo lunar astronauts and
quizzed them on their giant steps for mankind and the aftermath of this cosmic
experience.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Of the twelve astronauts who walked on the moon only nine are still alive. One
day in the near future there will be none: no one on earth will have known
the giddy thrill of gazing back at us from another world. In Moondust Andrew
Smith sets out to find and interview the remaining moonwalkers in order to
learn how their lives, and ours, were changed for ever by this surreal
adventure.
FROM THE CRITICS
Clive Thompson - The New York Times
Historians typically explain Apollo as a simple matter of beating the Soviets
and proving American technological superiority. But Smith argues, with some
persuasiveness, that the moon shot was not nearly so rational or calculated. It
was less a feat of exploration than an awesome piece of public theater,
a gesture ''as primitive as song.'' The astronaut Joseph Allen once claimed
that the most important part of going to the moon wasn't actually about the
moon. It was the act of looking backward at the Earth -- a $24 billion moment
of self-reflection, when we finally realized just how tiny our world was.
The moment ''that nobody foresaw: a unique opportunity to look at ourselves,''
Smith writes. ''How madly, perfectly human.''
Publishers Weekly
Between 1969 and 1972, 12 men traveled a quarter-million miles to the moon and
returned safely. In this powerful, intimate story, journalist Smith sets
out to find these men and discover how that experience changed their lives.
Smith, a boy living in a nondescript California subdivision at the time of
the Apollo missions and caught up in the endless possibility of space flight,
journeys to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., and the backwoods of
Texas in search of these mythical figures of American know-how. He finds Neil
Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, still cool and confident, a plainspoken
man who never let on how close that mission came to disaster. In Gene Cernan,
the last man on the Moon, he finds an imperious, driven, highly successful
businessman. If all of the men share one affliction, it's fame. Once at the
center of the world's attention, these mostly ordinary men with some
extraordinary
gifts and luck have lived their lives being asked the same question-What was it
like "up there"? In an artful blend of memoir and popular history, Smith
makes flesh-and-blood people out of icons and reveals the tenderness of his own
heart. Agent, Emma Parry. (Aug.) Copyright 2005
Cheryl Fogle MA
Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology, University of New Mexico
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