Customer Reviews

Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
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You might not like Alan Shepard when you've finished, but you'll love this book. Couldn't put it down.

I can't imagine the vast amount of research that went into this biography, but it was well worth the time and effort. The book is packed with detail, humor, and antecdotes that help the reader to really understand the good, the bad, and the ugly about Alan Shepard. The writer manages to invoke admiration for Shepard even when describing him at his very worst. This was definitely (along with Chris Kraft's autobiography) one of the most interesting and entertaining accounts of a legendary figure in America's race for the moon.

I found this bio to be well written, and informative on not only Shepard, but also the Mercury Seven and the beginnings of NASA. It charts the mans abilities, and also his shortcomings, and well evokes the period of the space race. I thoroughly enjoyed it, highly recommend it and recommend the From Earth to the Moon miniseries as a good companion piece.

I've read many books about the early days of space travel, and while I did enjoy Mr. Thompson's book, some incorrect information bugged me. Mr. Thompson referred to the second group of astronauts as the "Next Nine". Did anyone In all my reading, they were always called the "New Nine". He wrote that HAM endured electrical shocks when his capsule malfunctioned. HAM's capsule did have problems and his landing was off course, but it was Enos who suffered the shocks - even when he pushed the levers correctly. Enos was the "pissed off" chimp, not HAM. I realize this book was about Alan Shepard but Mr. Thompson's inaccuracies made me wonder about his overall research.

If you are one of the older generation who lived through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, this is a well written, well researched book on Alan Shephard. Shephard and Grissom are two of my all-time heroes. It was a good read, as this talented author's always are!

In gazing at the cover of this book, I couldn't believe the photo they chose. That's an Atlas rocket, which Shepard never flew on. He flew on a Redstone rocket.

How in the world did this huge mistake get by the fact-checkers? Any space fan with at least a basic knowledge of space history would know this.

This well written book tells the story of astronaut Allan Sheppard, a man of great talent and courage who, as one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts who were all called heroes before they ever went into space. Sdeppard was a man of contradictions - a national hero with a huge ego but very shy, a devoted husband and father who chased every skirt when away from home. Thompson did a great job, I could not put the book down!

I have read many books from the early days of the US Space program and this one really stands out as telling it like it was. Instead of the idoltary and homespun heroes of "The Right Stuff", this book tells the story of a man who was the first American in space. Very well written and revealing of the good and the bad from Alan Shepard. While there's great detail on the space program, Shepards' early life and the influences that made him the man he was were well explained.

The hardback version of this book was an extremely entertaining read, but was unfortunately marred by many basic factual errors. It is good to see that the author took the time to fix the major ones for this paperback edition - it is a much better read for it.