Inventing The American Astronaut

the long version

Who were the men who led America's first voyages into space? Were they soldiers or daredevils? The public sometimes imagined them that way: military men or hot-shot pilots without the capacity for doubt, fear, or worry. Instead, the early astronauts were something else: a new kind of "organization man," calm, calculating, and attuned to the politics and celebrity of the space race. Through archival documents, popular culture, and interviews with the astronauts themselves, the book examines the origins of a new American profession and follows it through the last Moon landing and the creation of the space shuttle.