Rating: 
Summary: An essential Apollo Book
Review: There are a handful of books that are essential to understanding of how the successes of Apollo were achieved and about the people who made it happen. This is one of those books. "Apollo EECOM" is far more personal than most and is an easy, engrossing read. Above all, I appreciate Liebergot's honesty. Highly Recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Worthwhile Different Point of View on Apollo Era NASA
Review: This book is a little short (200 pages) and Sy spends almost a third of that on his troubled childhood. But is a worthwhile read for someone interested in Apollo Era NASA. Sy gives a more low level view of the operation than we have gotten from the many astronaut biographies and flight director biographies (Kraft and Kranz). I enjoyed the "extra's" that he included on the CD, particularly a humorous song from a post-Apollo 13 roast. I would not make it the first book I read about the moon program, but it is a nice collection to my NASA book collection.
Rating: 
Summary: The CD is Amazing
Review: This book is interesting, and a noble effort for a first time author. I have always been fascinated by the Apollo program, and have always found the mission control team interesting. (I highly recommend 'Failure is not an Option' by Gene Kranz.) When I heard that Sy Liebergot had written a book, I pre-ordered it. I generally found the book interesting but not as focused on the Apollo program, NASA or the EECOM job as the title would imply. I am amazed by the hardships that Sy overcame and my hat is off to him for that, I just wish that his first book had focused more on Apollo and EECOM duties (after all, the title is 'Apollo EECOM') and less on his personal tribulations. There is one incredibly redeeming feature of the book, though, and it is the enclosed CD, which is a series of recordings of the EECOM loop during the Apollo 13 near disaster as well as some Apollo 15 audio and a spoof song for the post Apollo 13 party. Overall, a good book, but the CD alone is worth the cost!
Rating:
Summary: A great, personal insight.
Review: This book isn't one of those thick, literary historical tomes that we have seen a good many of in the last few years from former NASA managers. Rather, this feels like you have been personally invited into Sy's living room to sit on the sofa and look over his memorabilia while he tells you about it over your shoulder. It's a surprisingly frank and honest look at his life. Rather than trying to build himself up to be an historical figure, he pulls no punches with an account of a difficult, scrappy early life where he had to learn to survive his family, then work out how to leave and make something of himself. He tells this compelling story so well that I would have read it even if he had not gone on to join NASA - something I also felt when reading Scott Carpenter's account of his difficult upbringing in his recent memoir. When Liebergot moves on to his years at NASA, we get a refreshingly different account of how things worked there. Most other books on this era have been written by those in the upper echelons of management, but Liebergot here shows us what it was like for the footsoldier in the trenches, with a few little accounts of tempers lost in mission control and other disagreements that the official histories try and gloss over. Rather than do this as a tell-all, Liebergot includes his own failings in the mix - he doesn't hide the fact that he is now on his third marriage, nor the reasons. Liebergot was there for some of NASA's finest undertakings, and this book tells you what it was like from a human perspective - the weariness, the shortcomings, the oversights - that round out the picture very well. In short, this is not a polished history of NASA at its finest hour. Rather it is a very loose, informal journey through one man's difficult life, and how he managed to wash up in the right place at the right time.
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