Overview

The race to space between the United States and the Soviet Union captured the popular imagination. On April 12, 1961, the USSR launched cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on a one-orbit flight, making him the first human in space. Three weeks later, American astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. flew 116 miles above Earth before splashing down in the Bahamas. Over the next twenty years astronauts emerged as national heroes. This book tells the story of the people and events of Projects Mercury and Gemini with hundreds of unpublished and rare photographs—both colour and black-and-white. Unlike other publications, which illustrate the space race with well-known and easily accessible images, this history draws from the authors’ private library of over one hundred thousand (and growing) high-quality photos of the early U.S. manned-space program. Collected over a lifetime from public and private sources—including NASA archives, fellow collectors, retired NASA and news photographers, and auction houses—the images document American space missions of the Cold War era more comprehensively than ever before. Devoting a chapter to each flight, the authors also include detailed descriptions, providing new insight into one of America’s greatest triumphs.

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9780826352613

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Reviews

[Bisney and Pickering] have collected an impressive selection of photographs. The book's massive assortment . . . does a wonderful job of illustrating the culture and experience of the space race. --mentalfloss.com

If you think you ve seen every cool photo from the pioneering days of NASA, think again! J. L. Pickering and John Bisney have combed the archives . . . to create an extraordinary visual record that will delight and surprise even the most hard-core space enthusiast. Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts

If you think you've seen every cool photo from the pioneering days of NASA, think again! J. L. Pickering and John Bisney have combed the archives . . . to create an extraordinary visual record that will delight and surprise even the most hard-core space enthusiast. -- Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts

Author Information

John Bisney is a former correspondent who covered the space program for more than thirty years for CNN, the Discovery Channel, and SiriusXM Radio, among other news outlets. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. J. L. Pickering lives in Bloomington, Illinois, USA. He is a space-flight historian who has been archiving rare space images and historic artefacts for some forty years.

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