Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon

Rating:
Summary: A pretty children's book, but inaccurate
Review: What none of the reviews so far have mentioned is that this is essentially a book aimed at children. That should be obvious from Reynolds' previous books, all of which have been Star Wars books with lots of illustrations and two of which are "pocket" books less than 30 pages long. Although the dust jacket trumpets Reynolds' previous books, mentioning that one was a best-seller, and refers to his Ph.D., this is all misleading. Reynolds' experience is writing illustrated childrens' fiction books, not history. This book is not intended to be an accurate or comprehensive history of Apollo, but a picture book for the early teen market.

The book is beautifully illustrated. Some of the artwork is excellent, and the labels are designed to be clearly understandable. The photographs are also quite good, and the author deserves much credit for using dramatic photos that have not been used in other books before. If all you are going to do is look at the photos, then this is a really good book.

The text, however, leaves a lot to be desired. Often the style is one of outright cheerleading and hero-worship rather than objective history. The author does not provide a balanced critique of the Apollo program. John F. Kennedy and Wernher von Braun are brave and unvarnished heroes in this book. The problem is that this portrayal distorts reality. Von Braun, for instance, was only one of many influential people involved in the Apollo program and was not necessarily the most important engineer. Most of the work he did on the Saturn rocket was bureaucratic, not engineering. And by focusing too much on him, Reynolds detracts from the many other people who had significant impacts on the space program, such as Robert Gilruth, George Mueller, Abe Silverstein and even NASA Administrator James Webb. Similarly, Kennedy pursued Apollo solely to beat the Russians, and was never enthusiastic about space.

There are also errors that indicate that Reynolds got most of his information from other books and not original research--and that he did not get anyone to fact-check his work. Some of the mistakes are not merely minor errors, but serious distortions of what happened. Take, for instance, the claim that it was a Disney space film that led President Eisenhower to start the scientific satellite program (pgs. 30-33). There is absolutely no evidence that Eisenhower even watched that program or requested a copy for the White House. And the claim that 100 million people watched it is also unsupported. Reynolds apparently got his story from the book Blueprint for Space. If he had looked at other more recent books, like Howard McCurdy's Space and the American Imagination, or had talked to the relevant people in the history field, he would have learned that this story was false. Similarly, he also claims that President Eisenhower specifically forbade the Germans from launching Missile 29 to orbit. There is no evidence to support this claim, and other space historians, like Michael Neufeld, have explained that this missile was never capable of reaching orbit at that time (for instance, it had no guidance system). There are numerous other mistakes and omissions, but one gets the sense that the author was not about to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

The book is only around 270 pages long, with over half of those pages taken up by photographs and illustrations. There is no way that such a short book could be the "best" or "most accurate" or "most comprehensive" history of a space program that spanned more than a decade and used the equivalent of over $180 billion in today's money. This is a book aimed at the early teen market, not the serious space reader.

In summary, the book is fun to look at, but unfortunately will give children inaccurate information about the Apollo program. At a time when space enthusiasts get enraged that some people claim that the moon landings were faked, one wonders why they so enthusiastically embrace books that get the history wrong.

Rating:
Summary: The best and MOST ACCURATE book on the subject!
Review: When I first picked up David West Reynolds' APOLLO: The Epic Journey To The Moon, the first thing I did was turn to the index to seek out "Disney, Walt" and "von Braun, Wernher," two names that greatly influenced my childhood (had "Rogers, Roy" been a space cowboy, I'd've looked him up too). Déjà vu: I was instantly taken back to the past looking toward the future with a 10-year-old's wide-eyed awe and wonderment. That's what this amazing book instills in the reader: that same sort of wonder and expectation, as if the Apollo missions were about to lift off tomorrow, yet providing a jolt to the memory that causes you to gasp, "Omigod, I remember that!"

Reynolds writes about the first of three "sci-fi" segments of ABC-TV's Disneyland that aired on March 9, 1955: "Man In Space explained the challenges that would face humans traveling into space and detailed von Braun's concepts for a reusable space shuttle, dramatizing one of its missions and ending with a spectacular night landing...It was watched by an audience of 100 million. [It] was so popular and so provocative...that President Eisenhower [till then, a doubting Thomas] called Disney to order a copy for review by his staff and the Pentagon. It felt to many like a new age was just around the corner."
Man And The Moon, which was televised the following year, was "a preview of what would become the real Apollo 8...portrayed realistically with actors and included a mysterious sighting of unexplained lights on the surface of the Moon, strangely prefiguring events that would occur during the Apollo missions."

At 36, Dr. Reynolds, who has published scholarly articles on archaeology and ancient exploration, also authored the New York Times #1 bestseller Star Wars: Episode 1, The Visual Dictionary, among other books. However, he is truly at the top of his space game here. This is fascinating stuff, and Reynolds writes in a clear, concise, and entertaining style that makes even technophobes like yours truly easily comprehend one of the most spectacular - and complex -- scientific and historical achievements of the last century.

With a "you are there" Foreword by Apollo 7's Mission Commander Wally Schirra, and the cooperation of NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the reader can be assured of the accuracy of the detailed facts and figures Reynolds presents.

Richly illustrated with some rare and never-before-seen photos, it also includes many new rocket cutaways, and custom-keyed maps and panoramas that put you more lucidly in the lunar landscape.

Photographed for the first time is the famous memo to LBJ in which JFK asks, "Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to land on the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man?"

(Amusing to think that nowadays, American multimillionaires like 60-year-old money manager Dennis Tito and 23-year-old Lance Bass of the boy band N'Sync so casually shell out [$]million apiece to the Russians for the privilege of becoming Soyuz cosmonauts.)

However, this merely scratches the surface of the moon, for Reynolds pilots us to an ethereal kind of Tomorrowland in his Jules Vernesque conclusion: "We will one day surpass the achievement of Apollo. In reaching beyond it, we will at last fulfill its promise, a promise that lies waiting today, waiting for anyone to look up at the glow of the night sky, a promise recorded in the footprints on the Moon."

It is the profoundly inspiring Afterword by Gene Cernan, Mission Commander of Apollo 17, which brilliantly encapsulates Reynolds' comprehensive tome.

"One cannot behold all the lands and seas of the Earth in a single glance and remain unchanged by the experience," says Cernan. "Returning to Earth from the Moon poses the challenge of finding a perspective within yourself that can encompass what has happened to you, that can accommodate the matters of ordinary life as well as the memory of having looked into the endlessness of space and time from another world. I once stood upon the dust of the Moon and looked up, struggling to comprehend the enormity of the message that we found in Apollo. All that is here. In this book..."

No way, no how, could I have said it better.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful addtion to any collection!
Review: Wonderful photos highlight this stunning edition with excellent production values. Very satisfying in every way.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Pictures But Too Many Errors
Review: [UPDATE as of Dec 2, 2002: I just noted in another review of this book that the journal Choice named this book as one its Outstanding Academic Titles of the Year for 2002. As a practicing librarian who reviewed space history titles for seventeen years, I find it regrettable that a book as riddled with as many errors as this one should receive such an award from such a prestigious journal. I can only hope that the publisher furnish an errata sheet to the libraries holding this title.]

Reynolds's Apollo book is beautifully printed to be sure (I'm especially fond of the double gatefold rendering of the venerable Saturn V) and his enthusiasm for his subject clearly shows. Unfortunately, this same enthusiasm apparently stands in the way of his getting many of the facts straight--a vitally important task for any book purporting to provide the reader with an accurate history of any subject.

There are numerous misidentifications and inaccuracies in the captions and the text; e.g., there is a particularly irritating series of mis-identifications of the Saturn 500-F Facilities Test Vehicle--a non-flight mockup--which he confuses with other Saturn launch vehicles. Beginning on page 63, it is mis- identified as AS-504 (which was actually Apollo 9's launch vehicle), then on page 92 AS-504 it is referred to as Apollo 4, when that mission's Saturn V was actually AS-501. On page 86, he finally gets it right and identifies 500-F correctly. And, for what it's worth, the first Saturn V was launched in 1967, not 1968 (page 253). Needlessly irritating all around.

Similarly on page 94, Reynolds states that the Super Guppy air transport plane landed Saturn S-IVB stages on an airstrip "near the Vehicle Assembly Building". The map on the accompanying page also identifies the airstrip as the "NASA airstrip Super Guppy landing area." But this is incorrect. He confuses the Skid Strip located to the south at Cape Canaveral proper, where the Super Guppy did in fact land in the '60s, with the Shuttle Landing Facility, which didn't even exist until the late 1970s.

This all may sound like nitpicking, but the accuracy of the historical record is essential to maintain in books like this, especially as new generations study the history of Apollo.

Examples of more substantive historical lapses include Reynolds's assertion that the 1955 Walt Disney "Man in Space" television programs so excited President Eisenhower that Ike personally called Disney for a copy of the shows so his staff and the Pentagon could review them (page 33). This assertion is undocumented and is highly unlikely to have happened--nothing in the historical record indicates that Eisenhower had any interest in space exploration whatsoever, unless it was directly connected to the national defense. To suggest that US space policy had its beginning because Ike and Mamie were watching a TV show strains credulity.

Finally, one last example: The author mis-quotes Astronaut Wally Schirra on the occasion of the Gemini 6 pad abort. Reynolds has Schirra saying "We're just sitting here bleeding" when in fact Schirra said "We're just sitting here breathing", a difference that completely changes the complexion of the situation and the astronauts' demeanor in this life-or-death situation.

Clearly this book fails the accuracy test. It is a shame that such a handsome book should be marred by errors that could have been easily caught by any knowledgeable copy editor.

But to give the author credit where it is due, Reynolds is to be lauded for his inclusion of the Apollo Applications Program story--an under-studied and, unfortunately, largely forgotten, aspect of the hey day of manned space exploration. As the author explains, AAP was a separate follow-on program to the Apollo moon landing missions that was to have utilized Saturn/Apollo hardware for extended lunar stays of up to two weeks and longer as well as for earth orbiting space stations. The decline in public support for manned space flight and consequent downturn in NASA's budget in the late '60s consigned these advanced missions to the drawing boards (except for Skylab) and resulted in the abandonment of the Saturn launch vehicles and Apollo spacecraft--a short-sighted and wasteful decision considering all the money spent on the development of this hardware.

Despite all this book's flaws, Reynolds does well to remind today's generation that Apollo was cut short before it reached its full potential. Perhaps armed with that knowledge, we will someday find the inspiration to return to the moon.