Publisher Description
The first book to capture both the Soviet and American sides of the event that started the space race and changed our world.
On October fourth, 1957, a time of Cold War paranoia, the Soviet Union secretly launched the Earth’s first artificial moon. No bigger than a basketball, the tiny satellite was powered by a car battery. Yet, for all its simplicity, Sputnik stunned the world.
Based on extensive research in the US and newly opened archives in the former USSR, Red Moon Rising tells the story of five extraordinary months in the history of technology and the rivalry between two superpowers. It takes us inside the Kremlin and introduces the Soviet engineer Korolev, the charismatic, politically-minded visionary who motivated Khruschev to support what others dismissed as a ridiculous program. Korolev is virtually unknown to most Americans, yet it is because of him that NASA exists, that college loan programs were started in the US, and that Kennedy and Johnson became presidents.
Character driven, suspenseful, and dramatic, Red Moon Rising unveils the politics, people, science, and mindset behind a critical and transformative world event.
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“This is an amazing book. A great cast of characters: Korolev, Kruschev, Werner Von Braun, Eisenhower, Nixon, and many more. Not as much rocket science as I would have liked, but so much great Russian and American cold war history that it more than makes up for it. I also found that the author tended to rely on a small number of sources, particularly Sergei Kruschev’s memoirs…but ultimately the end result was so fascinating, and so far from what I already know anything about, that I never stopped being totally fascinated…I TORE through this book. A great story of twisting and turning Russian-American political intrigue, and a depressing view of just how much “human progress” in the ’50s was actually driven by the arms race.”
—
Thomas (5 out of 5 stars)
