the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age

Possibly the best book I've had to read while studying a Masters in International Relations. So good, that I've actually read it twice (though skimmed a few bits the second time - it's long and tad bit flowery in parts).McDougall has done a fantastic job in digging into the story behind the space race, starting back in 1800s. He shows how Russia, pre-Soviet era, had a significant number of people dreaming of missions into space, which the USSR inherited.He also shows how the US realized one of the key, if not the key, benefit of satellites would be spying on others - and this required a regime that allowed satellite overflight of foreign countries. Which explains why the US chose only it's 3rd best group of rocketeers to compete to launch a satellite.Unfortunately, again as McDougall explains, the US kept this decision very, very secret and did nothing to explain this to the US public, so it badly lost the PR game when the USSR launched Sputnik.I could go on - so many interesting facts, useful to any student of great power politics and invaluable to students of space.

Being a so-called 'Child of Apollo.' I read this book expecting few new insights to the space program's formulative period. Gee, was I ever wrong! This book is filled with nuggests of historic information that provides the reader with greater context and historic analysis than any other book on the topic I have yet to read. Any student of history, political science, or space advocate should read this book carefully to be well-grounded in the Apollo Era. McDougall did an outstanding job in relating to the reader details of the context of the American and Soviet space programs throughout the 50's and 60's. Knowledge of the space age would be totally incomplete without having read this book! I highly recommend it. It is no wonder that this book won McDougall the 1986 Pulitzer Prize.

This is more than political history, however you might define that as a genre. This is more than a highly readable, deeply thoughtful presentation of the race between super powers which "ended" nearly 30 years ago. Eisenhower, Khrushchev, Kennedy, Johnson, von Braun, they are all here. But so are Plato, Dante, Nietzsche and Augustine. This is a meditation on what it means to be human in an age of never ending discovery through the extension of science and technology. McDougall boldly goes where so few dare, beyond the rockets and satellites in search of the soul. We still are living in this age and this timeless book still speaks to us.

What was the space race?What motivated it?How did it connect to other ₪political projects of the time?And what did it all mean?McDougall answers those questions better than anyone before or since.

This book is still the gold standard for scholarship on space policy. Although newer works have elaborated on it and added more detail, it still stands as the reference for much of the history of the first 30 years of the Space Age.

A very thorough look at the space race from a political viewpoint. The problem with this book is it is horribly overwritten. 461 pages of dense text that could be whittled down by at least 100 pages. Excruciating details are discussed leaving the reader with a headache from all the material.The author also wants to get deep towards the end and turn philosophical. I was so tired that my eyes glazed over reading about the origins of the universe.There is also a lot of exclamation points in this book. Lots of typos on the kindle edition as well. Plus they included the page numbers in the text which was annoying.Mediocre at best for such a highly acclaimed book. Not for the average reader who wants a review of the space race.

LBJ, who failed in Vietnam, succeeded in building NASA in 1958, holding hearings in December, 1957 on Sputnik. Why did he succeed in space and civil rights, and fail so badly in Vietnam?The US military - army and navy - by default tried to put a satellite up in late 1957, but failed on the launchpad, eliciting a hail of derision from Life Magazine, which called the failures Kaputnik, Stayputnik, and Flopnik.Meanwhile the Soviets launched Sputnik II and III - II contained a dog, Laika, who died in orbit, since the Soviets lacked a re entry program. Von Braun put Explorer I in orbit in January, 1958, as a fierce debate broke out in Congress, and the country, over federal role in education, and the nature thereof.John Dewey reforms, and the NEA, had predominated education, promoting "life adjustment" over "the three R's": reading, writing, and arithmetic. Conservatives opposed this. This debate went back to the wave of immigration from 1890 - 1920, and the centered on the concept of the "melting pot".Today "identity politics" dominate the Democrat Party, and they hate the "melting pot". At the time, Von Braun, who came out of strict German classical education, opposed Dewey and "life adjustment" education. Conservatives won the battle here, but lost the war, a recurring theme for them.The battle won, NASA took effect in October, 1958, and rest is history. The American satellites were superior to Russian designs, but the Russians put the first man in space, but NASA and the American industry surged ahead under JFK in the 1960's, until the 68ers destroyed American culture, and sent America on a decline that continues to this day.I was right in the middle of this fight, and know it first hand: the person who led the battle against the liberal destruction of Nasa and American development was Lyndon LaRouche, and you can read his website to understand it.Just do an internet search on Tavistock and Nasa to get the details.

The Kindle version of this book is so fraught with transcription errors that I feel it's an insult to Mr. McDougall's work. I cheerfully report errors in e-books as I read them and I wish I could compare my report count for this book with other's I've read -- I would guess I reported easily 20 times more errors -- and I didn't even bother to report the pervasive "[Page 123]" text that was rudely jammed into in the middle of words all over (whatever software scanned this book seemed to think the page numbers were part of the text and often even spliced it between hyphenated line-breaks). Other errors were shamefully consistent -- for example: every instance of the word 'modern' was replaced with 'modem' -- which suggested to me that after scanning this book nobody bothered to read it to correct repeated mistakes.I found the actual work very interesting and would happily endorse this book in hard-copy format (I'd have given it a 4-star review if the digital copy wasn't such a mess).