Apollo: Race to the Moon [Paperback]

Charles Murray (Author), Catherine Bly Cox (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Touchstone Books (May 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067170625X
• ISBN-13: 978-0671706258
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #661,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a Shame This Book is Out of Print, May 10, 2004

By 

Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Apollo: Race to the Moon (Paperback)

Perhaps the best general account of the lunar program, this history uses interviews and documents to reconstruct the stories of the people who participated in Apollo. Although published in 1989 and long out of print, "Apollo: The Race to the Moon" still stands out as the best popular book on the subject ever to appear.

Neither a warmed over account of the astronauts and their adventures on the Moon nor a large-format illustrated history--both of which are in abundance--this book seeks to understand the larger contact of Apollo by focusing on the massive technical and scientific infrastructure that made the trips to the Moon possible. Taking as its central characters not the astronauts but the managers and engineers who ran the program, this book by famed author and political lightning rod Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox is based extensively on interviews with the remaining actors of the endeavor. The authors spent considerable time talking to NASA officials, both active and retired, at the Johnson Space Center, the Marshall Space Flight Center, and the Kennedy Space Centers, as well as high level officials in Washington. In this book Murray and Cox reconstruct a non-scholarly account of Apollo that examines operational details of the program that have gone undiscussed in astronaut-centric works.

By taking this approach Murray and Cox shift the history of Apollo to its most appropriate place. They recognize that the feat, as impressive as it was and as heroic as the astronauts truly were, was essentially an accomplishment of systems management. It was an endeavor that demonstrated both the technological and economic virtuosity of the United States and established national preeminence over rival nations--the primary goal of the program when first envisioned by the Kennedy administration in 1961.

Apollo was an enormous and complex undertaking, as Murray and Cox document with great skill, costing $25.4 billion with only the building of the Panama Canal rivaling the Apollo program's size as the largest non-military technological endeavor ever undertaken by the United States and only the Manhattan Project being comparable in a wartime setting.

Murray and Cox emphasize that Project Apollo was a triumph of management in meeting the enormously difficult systems engineering and technological integration requirements. James E. Webb, the NASA Administrator at the height of the program between 1961 and 1968, always contended that Apollo was much more a management exercise than anything else, and that the technological challenge, while sophisticated and impressive, was also within grasp. More difficult was ensuring that those technological skills were properly managed and used. Webb's contention was confirmed in spades by the success of Apollo. NASA leaders had to acquire and organize unprecedented resources to accomplish the task at hand.

There is a wonderful editorial in the November 1968 issue of "Science" magazine, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which speaks to the management system that Murray and Cox bring to life in this book: "In terms of numbers of dollars or of men, NASA has not been our largest national undertaking, but in terms of complexity, rate of growth, and technological sophistication it has been unique....It may turn out that [the space program's] most valuable spin-off of all will be human rather than technological: better knowledge of how to plan, coordinate, and monitor the multitudinous and varied activities of the organizations required to accomplish great social undertakings."

If you want to understand the Apollo program, you must read and ponder this important book by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox. I only wish it were still in print.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazon now has the new paperback edition, November 20, 2004

By 

Charles Murray (Burkittsville, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Apollo: Race to the Moon (Paperback)

Amazon is now selling the 2004 edition (which no longer has the subtitle "The Race to the Moon"). Search on "Apollo" for title and "Murray" or "Cox" for author.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It is back in print..., October 19, 2004

By 

Sean - See all my reviews

This review is from: Apollo: Race to the Moon (Paperback)

There are also audio files, and lots of extra pictures not included in the book at their website, where you can also buy the book.

You can get more information at http://www.apollostory.com/