Countdown: A History of Space Flight

Countdown offers a technically detailed, historically rich narrative of the human quest to enter deep space. T. A. Heppenheimer, the author of several books touching on the history of aviation, traces the development of manned flight through the military rocketry programs of the pre-World War II era, writing of experiments that often ended disastrously until all the ingredients, physical and chemical, came together. Drawing on recently declassified documents, he studs his account with telling anecdotes. (In one, a Soviet crew returned from a circumnavigation of earth and touched down off course, winding up in the Ural Mountains surrounded by hungry wolves--hardly the stuff of regular astronaut training.) For space buffs, this is a highly recommended work of reference.