A really engrossing memoir of a life reporting on the US space program with especially entertaining anecdotes of the early Mercury and Gemini days. The stories of the how these cosmic heroes prepared for their missions, relaxed, and the brotherhood are a must read for any space enthusiast. Barbee's coverage of the President Carter's election run makes for an earth-bound change of pace that reads as interesting as anything else in the book. Barbee clearly believes in the goals of the space program and he communicates well the need to invest more in the efforts around the world to put humans back into space ( )

Some individuals are lucky enough to be present at the genesis of something special and such is the case with Jay Barbree. He was a young journalist when he first filed a report on Sputnik and his world changed that very night. He moved to Cocoa Beach and began to transmit radio reports from the Cape for NBC News.

Barbree tells it all. Snatches of unguarded conversations overheard in the men's room. The day he and Alan Shepard took cover under the same pylon while a tower rocket off a Redstone spectacularly blew itself up over their heads. He remembers the night Gus Grissom begged him to go national with the story that Apollo was not safe and not ready to fly and his intense horror a few days later when his friend died in that very capsule. The Christmas evening he spent covering Apollo 8 and had dinner at a coffee shop counter with John Glenn. The glory of the moon landings. The hope he felt during the Apollo-Soyuz program. The lean times when he had to take a newspaper job to cover his bills because Apollo was over and the Shuttle was not yet flying. His awe at seeing Columbia lift off for the first time. His outrage over seeing both the Columbia and Challenger destroyed due to bad decisions. The heart attack he suffered while jogging on the beach which didn't end his life, but did end his candidacy for Journalist in Space program.

Yes, Barbree saw a lot of history. He's billed as the only reporter to cover every mission flown by astronauts. I wasn't quite swept away by his telling and I think it's mostly a stylistic thing. He is a man of his generation and I grew up in a much younger time - reporting has changed a lot. What I did take from Barbree is his incredible optimism. He believes there is a future in space. That we are going back to the moon and someday, to Mars. All of his years, the friends he lost, the politics that he saw played out, have not tarnished the shine on his sheer joy at the endeavor of space exploration. He wants to be around to report on America's next launch and I sure hope he is. ( )

Space flight is mankind's greatest adventure, and Jay Barbree has been there for all ot it. He started covering space-related stories shortly after Sputnik was launched, and has not stopped yet.

He conveys beautifully the beauty, mystery, and wonder; the pranks, the engineering successes and failures, and the tragedies. The saddest part of the whole book is that none of the three tragedies - the Apollo 1 fire and the two lost shuttles - was inevitable. They could have been prevented. Prior to the Apollo 1 fire in which Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee died, Grissom came to Barbree and asked for help. He said the contracts for the Apollo components had been given to cronies, and the items they were producing were of poor quality. Barbree tried to persuade NBC to cover the story of the poor quality, but the higher ups didn't want to do so. As for the two shuttle explosions, fears were raised in both instances about exactly the things that went wrong, but in both cases it was decided the flaws weren't serious enough to stop the flights.

Barbree also conveys the joys of space flght, and a sense of some of the personalities involved. His admiration for the astronauts and others who work with them is clear. Barbree doesn't expect to be around when humankind lands on Mars, but if he is, he'll happily cover the story! ( )