posted 04-19-2018 02:43 AM               

The story of the famed race to the Moon between the US and the USSR has been told countless times. The strategies of these two superpowers have often been paralleled in a way that highlights their fight for dominance and efforts to develop needed new technologies. This book will show how beneath these surface similarities, the two competing nations employed very different core tactics.

It provides a new perspective of the history of the space race by analyzing that history through philately — that is, from the images on postage stamps, postcards, and letters in circulation at that time. Through this fascinating historical visual record, the author shows how the propaganda-heavy approach of the USSR eventually lost out to the more pragmatic approach of the United States.

• Softcover
  
• Springer (October 11, 2018)
  
• ISBN 978-3-319-92152-5

posted 12-28-2018 06:07 PM               

Equally rare, and very welcome, is the book "The Race to the Moon: Chronicled in Stamps, Postcards and Postmarks; A Story of Puffery vs. the Pragmatic." Too often created on a photocopier or self-published, this volume was produced by the highly respected Springer-Praxis Books in Space Exploration series. This not only elevates the hobby but exposes those interested in space to our corner of the world.

Traditionally, those of us writing handbooks, reference guides and catalogs cover what we know and love. Jim Reichman continues to expand his library of Soviet material while Steve Durst, Ray Cartier and others focus on the United States. It is therefore a special treat when someone can responsibly cover both countries well. The other astrophilatelist who did this successfully in 2016 was Walter Hopferwieser when he released Pioneer Rocket Post and Cosmic Post which supplanted the venerable E-Z Catalog. Hopferwieser expects to have an English version out this year.

When Cavallaro decided to tackle the Space Race much was expected. He begins by sharing how the Soviets master symbology, imagery and postage stamps to herald the advancement of Soviet science and technology. Propaganda was ubiquitous, coordinated, and effective. There was no corollary in the West. The rise of Russian stamp clubs was directly related to a desire on the part of the State to celebrate the conquest of space.

Unlike simply a scholarly history of the competition that began with the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year (IGY), Cavallaro immediately plunges into French fakes and Soviet backdating. Not only does he extensively document Russian fakes but he dips into the classic Study of Suspect Space Covers by Ramkissoon and Winick and updated by Paul Bulver, to cover the Riser fakes that plague America. Each chapter has on average 30 references from both space history and philately. He has spent considerable time reading Lebedev, Mishin and Vladimirov as well as the NASA History Series.

The book is not without its faults. Cavallaro is not writing in his native tongue. On rare occasions he uses the wrong word. For example, when describing the pure oxygen environment that contributed to the Apollo 1 fire, he described the choice as “the most inflammable option” that NASA could have chosen instead of the most flammable one. While many of his illustrations are stunning (and in color) they are not uniformly so. If he didn’t have more interesting envelopes to show for GT-V, VII, and VI-A then he should not have shown any. The ones he showed just diluted the overall excellent quality of the book. To his credit, he was able to show in print, for the first time, Armstrong Moon covers. How he was able to get the images, which were only available late in the year, into his 2018 book is impressive.