One Giant Leap
Neil Armstrong's Stellar American Journey
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
On July 20, 1969 the whole world stopped. It was a day in which a man who grew up on a farm without electricity would announce, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
In this, the first ever biography of Neil Armstrong, Leon Wagener explores the man whose walk on the moon is still compared to humankind's progenitor's crawl out of the primordial ooze. And whose retreat back to a farm in his native Ohio soon after the last ticker tape confetti fell, has left him looked upon as a reclusive hermit ever since.
This is the true story of a national hero, whose life long quest to walk on the moon truely mirrors our best selves, an American who braved incredible danger daily over a long career, finally achieving what seemed impossible, and broke free of the Earth's surly bonds proving forever that man can reach for the stars, and succeed.
Relying on hundreds of interviews with family and friends of the astronaut, plus generous access to the NASA files, Leon Wagener explores the life of one of America's true heroes, in a book filled with extraordianry adventure, and even greater achievement.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Some astronauts are born interesting; others have interestingness thrust upon them. Neil Armstrong is one of the latter, to judge by this engaging, if reverent, biography. Journalist Wagener covers the life of the first man on the moon from his all-American boyhood dreaming of space flight, through his service as a Korean war fighter pilot and his grueling NASA training regimen, to his reluctant post-moonshot celebrity and later career as an engineering professor and aerospace dignitary on boards of directors and government commissions. Armstrong is disciplined and"taciturn," sometimes"silent as a sphinx"; other astronauts considered him a recluse, and he seems not to have cooperated with the author, who relies on friends and colleagues for reminiscences. Still, flying to the moon is a pretty wild thing to do. Wagener provides a lucid and gripping narrative of Armstrong's space exploits, culminating in a nerve-wracking search for a safe place to land on the craggy, treacherous lunar surface with seconds of fuel left to spare. Almost as harrowing is the post-splashdown aftermath--a long stint in quarantine, strained encounters with President Nixon and the ticker-tape hoopla and media feeding frenzy of the astronauts' world tour. While readers may not agree that the moonshots were the highest pinnacle of the human spirit, Wagener will convince them that they were"pageant on the grandest of scales." Photos.
