Sort of boring, with flowery language that seems out of place at times. Did not finish; I have better things to do with my time. ( )

New York Times bestseller for fans of First Man: A “breathtaking” insider history of NASA’s space program—from astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton (Entertainment Weekly).
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, and the space race was born. Desperate to beat the Russians into space, NASA put together a crew of the nation’s most daring test pilots: the seven men who were to lead America to the moon. The first into space was Alan Shepard; the last was Deke Slayton, whose irregular heartbeat kept him grounded until 1975. They spent the 1960s at the forefront of NASA’s effort to conquer space, and Moon Shot is their inside account of what many call the twentieth century’s greatest feat—landing humans on another world. Collaborating with NBC’s veteran spa...

First edition signed as new

Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton’s Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Race to the Moon traces the history of American spaceflight from the earliest postwar experiments with captured German V-2 rockets through Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project flights. Shepard and Slayton worked with Jay Barbree and Howard Benedict, two journalists with experience writing about aerospace, in order to craft a narrative that both encompasses their lives and work as well as the activities driving spaceflight in the U.S. and Soviet Union, crosscutting between events as necessary to keep the reader apprised of the bigger picture that shaped Shepard and Slayton’s training and flights. Between Shepard and Slayton, the book encompasses an entire era of U.S. spaceflight and single-use rockets. Those familiar with Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff will find this a detailed narrative continuing the stories of two of the Mercury Seven. ( )

In this revised edition of the 1994 book, astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton narrate the story of America’s space exploration from the time of the first suborbital flight until shortly after astronauts walked on the moon. Proclaimed “the ultimate inside story of the United States space program” by veteran newscaster Walter Cronkite, this is the compelling, detailed account of what is widely considered the greatest feat of the twentieth century: landing man on the surface of another world.

Told only as those intimately involved with the program could tell it, this is an insider’s narrative of the history of America’s manned spaceflight program. In collaboration with veteran space reporter Jay Barbree, the two astronauts offer a unique look at NASA’s manned spaceflight program. Alan Shepard was the first American in space aboard Freedom 7 for a fifteen-minute Project Mercury suborbital flight; Deke Slayton was the last as a member of the crew for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. [The book ends with its look at the Apollo-Soyuz program in 1975; the first space shuttle flight in 1981 is some six years in the future. The Skylab space station program, which began in 1973, is not included here.]

Highly recommended. ( )