posted 09-14-2007 05:06 PM               

Many of us had read the individual astronauts' autobiographies that are on the market. On those astronauts of course, little new could probably be said. However, your book unearthes stories and background from those others that have not yet shared their life with the readers. In this context, I particularly enjoyed the extensive descriptions from Bill Anders, Rusty Schweickart, Donn Eisele that figure prominently in the book.

If I "missed something" after having read the first volume, it is the stories from NASA's competitor, the Soviet space programme. The first volume had covered the stories of Gagarin, Titov and Tereshkova. The 2nd volume only briefly mentions Komarov, and a longer paragraph on the joint flight of Soyuz 4 and 5. I feel a larger coverage of the parallel events in the Soviet Union would have been interesting - after all, they also had a Moon programme.

There is another reason of course: while stories and inside information about the US programme are tantamount and the book just adds a few interestin bits, the Soviet programme is - despite more openness since Glasnost - still fairly unchartered territory. Writing about the "social history" of THIS programme is not only still missing, but also a considerable challenge.

In other words: in case you were planning another book in that series, this would be an interesting topic. ;-)

posted 09-14-2007 06:48 PM            

You raise some good points about the differences in the two books. The first one does feel a lot more back-and-forth between the Soviet and US programs. It wasn't a choice of ours, but simply how the space program evolved chronologically. We had to tell history as it happened - and in following each person as they made their first flight into space, the second half of the decade was very different from the first.

In "Into That Silent Sea," writing about 1961-65, we could bounce back and forth between Mercury, Vostok and Voskhod flights, as they happened that way chronologically. For the second book, picking up after Voskhod 2, we begin by covering a time when the entire manned Gemini program took place and no Soviet spaceflights were made. It's not until 1967 that the Soviets got back into the game, and of course that was with the tragic Komarov flight, which we cover in a lot of detail (we covered his early life and first flight in the prior book). When the Soviets resume manned flight in 1968, it's the first occasion in this book's time frame that the Soviets return a cosmonaut from space alive. Three years without a successful flight - that was a long time in the heated space race of the 1960s.

So it's not that we were ignoring the Soviets - they just weren't flying. In the time frame we cover, all but one of the successful flights took place in the last year - 1969.

When they do fly, I think we give them a lot of attention and detail, as well as explaining why there were such large gaps between flights. Beregovoi's life and troubled Soyuz 3 flight is comprehensively covered. For Soyuz 4 and 5 (which get a significant part of a chapter, not just a paragraph), I think we give a good personal history of all of the cosmonauts involved, including a lot of personal details from interviews with them. Volynov, in particular, gets a lot of attention, with the prejudices he faced as the first Jewish spacefarer, and an accurate account of his almost-fatal re-entry (with much personal input from him) which has been told incorrectly elsewhere.

And that, in truth, are all of the flights that the Soviets flew in this time - a time when the US flew Geminis 3-12, Apollos 7-11, and went through the Apollo 1 tragedy.

Part of the reason, as we explore in the book, was that the Soviet program was trying to cover too many disparate aims at once. This second book, covering the difficult and sometimes tragic early history of Soyuz, shows how the Soviets worked through these early challenges to create the enduring workhorse of space travel that is still in (heavily modified) use today.

The story it sounds like you were also looking for - the parallel attempts for the Soviets to have a person fly around and / or land on the moon - is covered in our books - just not this one. We covered it in a lot of detail from the point of view of Alexei Leonov at the end of "Into That Silent Sea." As the person who consistently had a good chance of making such a flight, and who felt the immense frustrations of not doing so, Leonov's life seemed like the perfect place to tell those events, allowing it to be a personal as well as a technical story. As none of the planned missions flew, I feel it would have been a little out of place to have tried to squeeze them into this second book, which covers what did fly.

So, rather than not covering the social history of this second half of the decade from the Soviet point of view, I'd say that we do - but what you picked up on were a good number of years of confusion, regrouping and relative lack of flying.

I'm so glad you picked up on the effort to tell the stories of people like Eisele, Anders and Schweickart - people who have either passed away or have said they have no plans to write books themselves. And yet they are some of the most fascinating people. Anders and Schweickart were two of the most generous and giving people with their time and proofreading, and I strongly suspect this is the nearest we'll ever come to seeing their autobiographies. As for Eisele, he is so overlooked by space history, and yet was in the middle of two, arguably three, of the most contentious events in the astronaut office that ever took place. To have both of his wives not only contribute heavily to the book, but also agree together on the final draft, felt like a miracle to me. I hope the book helps people understand him just as well as we understand the better-known astronauts. Similarly, I am so pleased that Wally Schirra and Gordon Cooper gave so much of their time and thoughts to us for the events covered in this book, and people will now have the chance to hear them expressed.

posted 09-15-2007 12:04 PM               

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Originally posted by FFrench:
John, thanks so much for those wonderful comments. Out of curiosity, did you read "Into That Silent Sea" first, or begin with this one?

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And speaking of why I find this book works so well: the combination of regional perspectives. I especially like hearing from voices raised somewhere apart from the US. For example, I really enjoyed Hamish Lindsay's 2002 work "Tracking Apollo to the Moon" because Australian 'flavour' was full of stylistic differences, and subtleties not found in American retellings - a fresh perspective.

posted 09-16-2007 07:02 PM            

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Originally posted by Whizzospace:
...speaking of why I find this book works so well: the combination of regional perspectives. I especially like hearing from voices raised somewhere apart from the US.

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Jay, I agree that reading the books in order makes most sense if you are reading both - however I'm really pleased, John, that starting with the second book worked just fine for you, as they were intended to also work as standalone volumes.

posted 09-23-2007 12:39 PM            

I should mention that I'm not so much signing the book in front of the spacecraft, but on the hatch itself. It appears in one of the most iconic Apollo photos, so seemed like a good place to sign it!

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Originally posted by mdmyer:
I thought this review of In the Shadow of the Moon was probably one of the best I had read.

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posted 09-23-2007 12:49 PM               

I must comment once again on the writings of Francis French and Colin Burgess with their second book, In The Shadow of the Moon [with an excellent forward by Apollo 7's Walt Cunningham].

Francis and Colin have this uncanny knack of telling these fantastic stories of 40+ years ago like the happened yesterday. They are written to keep you riveted to the book, and for that, I compliment them. As I mentioned in a review of their first collaboration, this book does NOT read as dry history, but tells the stories in the astronaut's own words.

I was particularly fascinated by the discussions with Apollo 8's Bill Anders. Anders has chosen to stay out of the public spotlight since his 1968 flight, so reading his words was something very new to me and also very interesting. With a son now serving in the Middle East, it drew an interesting similarity between his flight during the Viet Nam war. Anders story, alone, makes the book that much more interesting.

The final six pages of the book dealing with Charlie Duke as Capcom on Apollo 11 also hit a chord with me. We rarely think about what the astronauts who were serving as CapCom in Mission Control might have been thinking - and Duke's thoughts really summed up the entire feel-good feeling that this book presents. Great job!

I hope that part 3 will be coming up soon. I look forward to reading it.

[and I'm glad to see that the book is dedicated to another wonderful person and unsung hero, Dee O'Hara]

posted 09-25-2007 09:03 AM               

I did not really like the play on words about the book being lost in the shadow of the film. It seems, at least on this forum, that the book is more popular. Maybe we are bias through. I have not see the film yet so I can't say which I enjoy the most. The reviewer states that the book takes a fairly standard chronological approach to the history of the manned programs in the two countries but later says the Russian program gets less coverage than the American program. I think the chronological order is maintained; it is just that the Russians were not flying as many manned missions in the late 60s. The reviewer also says no information about the Russian N-1 was given. I think the focus of In the Shadow of the Moon was to tell the stories of the people who were in the space program. The failure of the Russian N-1 was the end of their hopes to beat the Americans to the Moon but I don't think Francis and Colin wrote a book about the race. They wrote a book about the runners.

posted 09-26-2007 02:04 AM               

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Originally posted by ColinBurgess:
Just curious, as we've been wondering when The Big Guys would start placing it on their shelves.

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posted 09-26-2007 09:29 AM               

I'm afraid you'll have to get in line. I can think of several people who want it more than you do.

posted 09-26-2007 11:02 AM               

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
The B&N nearest to JSC in Houston had your book prominently displayed...

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posted 09-26-2007 04:26 PM            

Mike, thanks for posting that dual review of both book and movie - very interesting for us to read, as you can imagine - and I also really appreciate your thoughts about what you feel the reviewer perhaps overlooked about our book - thank you. Of course, I'm very pleased that overall he liked both book and movie and thinks they complement each other well (as do I). And I also appreciate you posting those other comparative reviews that look at the book in greater detail.

I have to say, one phrase you say above - "I don't think Francis and Colin wrote a book about the race. They wrote a book about the runners." - is such a wonderfully powerful phrase, and really summarizes what we tried to do - I only wish it could have been thought up earlier, we'd have put it on the back of the book!

Tracy, please allow me to add my thanks to Colin's for that very nice review - and to reassure you that I can only presume (and hope) that "your blood's worth bottling" is some peculiar Australian expression of respect. Certainly, when Colin has visited me, I have seen no (outward) evidence of vampirism, cannibalism or serial killing.

posted 09-27-2007 08:40 AM               

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Originally posted by FFrench:
I have to say, one phrase you say above - "I don't think Francis and Colin wrote a book about the race. They wrote a book about the runners." - is such a wonderfully powerful phrase, and really summarizes what we tried to do - I only wish it could have been thought up earlier, we'd have put it on the back of the book!

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posted 09-30-2007 10:34 PM            

It's interesting to see too that a Star Wars fan message board had some discussion of this book recently...

posted 09-30-2007 10:40 PM               

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Originally posted by FFrench:
In case anyone who lives around there is interested, I signed all of the copies they had.

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posted 10-02-2007 10:54 PM            

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
Did you ask permission first or did you just pull out a pen and start signing?

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posted 10-05-2007 04:02 PM               

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While doing some 'guerrilla signing' would certainly be tempting, the bookstore owns those physical copies, so I asked a staff member first...

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To Roger, How much is a signed copy of my book worth??? Usually in a bookshop I sign every copy of my book I can get my hands on so that the bookseller can't return them to the publisher -- but a rare book dealer is something else again. Henry Cooper Jr. Aug 17, 1974.

I guess that is one way to make sure a book is not returned to the publisher.

I have also added the signatures of Apollo 13 CapCom Jack Lousma who added the quote "We're starting to think about the LM lifeboat." and Sy Liebergot who added "OK you guys, we've lost FC 1 and2 pressure".

This is also the book that Sy contributed drawings of the fuel cells flow path to.

posted 10-05-2007 04:04 PM               

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Originally posted by mdmyer:
I thought this review of In the Shadow of the Moon was probably one of the best I had read.

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posted 10-05-2007 04:53 PM               

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Originally posted by mdmyer:
That story reminded me of a signed book I have in my collection. I have a signed copy of Henry Cooper's Thirteen: The Flight that Failed... This is also the book that Sy contributed drawings of the fuel cells flow path to.

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These two issues of New Yorker Magazine are dated Nov. 11 & 18, 1972 and between them contain a two part story entitled, "Annals of Exploration - Apollo 13 Accident". Written by Henry S.F. Cooper, these particular magazines are Sy's personal copies and in fact have his former address label affixed. Sy has autographed both Parts I and II in ballpoint on the first page of each installment which by the way is quite lengthy. These magazines are both intact though well read. This is a chance to own the Apollo 13 EECOM's personal copy of article. Incidentally, while this magazine represents the first appearance of Cooper's story, his account was later turned into a book entitled, "Thirteen - The Apollo Flight That Failed" (Dial Press, 1972) and a paperback of same title in 1995. Very nice and rare.

posted 10-05-2007 11:51 PM            

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Originally posted by Mike:
Well if one review is good two must be better.

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posted 10-07-2007 11:51 AM               

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969 (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of S) by Francis French have also purchased Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program by Pat Duggins. For this reason, you might like to know that Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program will be released on October 21, 2007

posted 10-07-2007 11:57 AM               

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Originally posted by MCroft04:
Also, does anyone have any info on this new book "Final Countdown"?

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