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Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon
Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon
Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon
Ebook484 pages7 hours

Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon

By Jeffrey Kluger

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The untold story of the historic voyage to the moon that closed out one of our darkest years with a nearly unimaginable triumph

In August 1968, NASA made a bold decision: in just sixteen weeks, the United States would launch humankind’s first flight to the moon. Only the year before, three astronauts had burned to death in their spacecraft, and since then the Apollo program had suffered one setback after another. Meanwhile, the Russians were winning the space race, the Cold War was getting hotter by the month, and President Kennedy’s promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade seemed sure to be broken. But when Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders were summoned to a secret meeting and told of the dangerous mission, they instantly signed on.

Written with all the color and verve of the best narrative non-fiction, Apollo 8 takes us from Mission Control to the astronaut’s homes, from the test labs to the launch pad. The race to prepare an untested rocket for an unprecedented journey paves the way for the hair-raising trip to the moon. Then, on Christmas Eve, a nation that has suffered a horrendous year of assassinations and war is heartened by an inspiring message from the trio of astronauts in lunar orbit. And when the mission is over—after the first view of the far side of the moon, the first earth-rise, and the first re-entry through the earth’s atmosphere following a flight to deep space—the impossible dream of walking on the moon suddenly seems within reach.

The full story of Apollo 8 has never been told, and only Jeffrey Kluger—Jim Lovell’s co-author on their bestselling book about Apollo 13—can do it justice. Here is the tale of a mission that was both a calculated risk and a wild crapshoot, a stirring account of how three American heroes forever changed our view of the home planet.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherMacmillan Publishers
Release dateMay 16, 2017
ISBN9781627798310
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Author

Jeffrey Kluger

JEFFREY KLUGER is a senior writer at Time and the author of several books. He and his wife, Alejandra, live in New York.

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  • 4/5
    I enjoyed reading this book. Until now, I didn't realize how this part of the space race fit into our history. If you have an interest in the race to the moon, then this would book would be a good addition to your library.
  • 4/5
    This is the history of the events leading up to and the events of the Apollo 8 mission, more specifically it follows the career of Frank Borman, the commander. It briefly goes into Frank's military career, then his career with NASA as an astronaut in the Gemini and Apollo programs. I found this to be sufficiently detailed, well written and interesting. As a fan of both history and the space program, this was a very enjoyable read. It does make a point of covering both the astronauts, t