by Charles Murray, Catherine Cox

isbn: 0671611011
subject: Nonfiction, General Science
finished: 1/14/2002

Apollo is a tremendously interesting book that almost completely ignores the astronauts. Rather, it focuses on political, administrative, personal, and technical elements of space program up to and during the moon missions. To make this work, Murray and Cox take an anecdotal approach -- each chapter follows a particular person or group of people who were crucial for some aspect of the program. For example, an early chapter is about Max Faget, a brilliant engineer and NASA administrator throughout the space program; the final chapters focus on the mission controllers for Apollo 11, 12, and 13 -- the first two missions experienced hair-raising emergencies that nearly caused them to be aborted and the last, of course, was a terrifying ordeal that the astronauts were fortunate to walk away from. Recommended.