The Man Who Ran the Moon: James E. Webb, NASA, and the Secret History of Project Apollo [Hardcover]

Piers Bizony (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 24, 2006

One man, more than any other, created the giant space agency we know today as NASA: James E. Webb. The Man Who Ran the Moon explores a time when Webb and an elite group of charismatic business associates took control of America's Apollo moon project, sometimes with disturbing results. In 1967, NASA was rocked by disaster and Apollo was grounded. Webb was savaged in a Congressional investigation. Not just a matter of broken hardware, there were accusations of corruption at the heart of America's space effort. Some of Webb's political allies had been caught up in the biggest scandal ever to hit Washington prior to Watergate. The backwash unfairly tainted NASA's chief. By the time of the first triumphant lunar landing, Webb had resigned and his name had all but been forgotten. But he's the man who got us to the moon, and the power base he forged in the 1960s has kept NASA on a solid footing to this day. Washington insiders now acknowledge Webb as one of the greatest leaders in modern American history. No space boss since his time has wielded so much power and such a powerful story.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Journalist Bizony's excellent corrective to NASA's mythologized history takes an unflinching look at how James Webb, a North Carolina farm boy turned Washington insider, ran his end of the space race as NASA's administrator under presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Presiding over the agency during its build-up to the Apollo moon mission, Webb grew the agency into a research and development behemoth by leaning heavily on the old boy network: he called in favors, brokered backroom deals, bullied those who weren't in lockstep with his vision and commandeered vast sums of federal budget money-all the while driven, Bizony contends, by "pure-hearted ideals." Bizony shows both the spectacular successes and failures leading up to the Apollo lunar landing and discusses success's cost in terms of dollars, human life and political ambition. The book closes with a chapter detailing the crippling blows dealt to NASA by the Nixon administration, a time period that saw the beginning of the space shuttle project. Hampered by budget restrictions, NASA engineers had to design a "dangerously imperfect piece of technology" that later resulted in two famous disasters. Bizony laments the militarizing of NASA under Reagan and the "wavering" public support for expanding the space program, but this firebrand of a book should rekindle interest.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The prosaic side of space exploration--the politics of the aerospace industry--is insightfully illustrated in Bizony's biography of James Webb, who headed NASA from 1961 to 1968. Webb's imprint remains on the organization for good and ill, and Bizony's consciousness of Webb's legacy--a post-Apollo NASA unsure of its goals--enhances his retrospective on Webb's tenure. A lawyer who cut his political teeth as a New Dealer, Webb believed in large-scale government-industry coordination, and thought he was creating a model of "space age management" in his leadership of the crash program to land on the moon. His model collapsed with the 1967 space capsule fire that killed three Apollo astronauts; an investigation exposed deals cut by the manufacturer that snagged the contract. This pork-barrel underside to the history of Apollo is a crucial corrective to the traditional emphasis on astronauts and missions, and Bizony carries it off with investigative determination while retaining balance. Emerging from the bureaucratic thickets with an ultimately praiseworthy portrait of Webb, this should circulate with the space program set. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; First Edition edition (May 24, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560257512
• ISBN-13: 978-1560257516
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,285,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Space Age Management", November 12, 2006

By 

Robert I. Hedges - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Man Who Ran the Moon: James E. Webb, NASA, and the Secret History of Project Apollo (Hardcover)

This long overdue biography of Jim Webb fills a needed void in the literature of the Apollo program. Webb, a disarming but astute partisan Democrat from North Carolina ran NASA during the crucial years leading up to the Apollo program. This book not only details his personal life, but the wheeling and dealing that went on behind the scenes in Washington to get to the moon.

Nobody doubts that Webb was brilliant, but Webb was not without flaws. He was totally infatuated with Roosevelt-era New Deal big government, and ran NASA accordingly, sometimes to the detriment of the program. He adopted the mantra of "Space Age Management" and took it to mean a giant, monolithic government run program straight from FDR's playbook. I think the book does a great job explaining Webb's less than savory relationships to politicians and others of questionable ethics in both the Kennedy and (especially) Johnson administrations such as Bobby Baker. It also recalls a less than savory battle with fellow Democrat and political climber, Walter Mondale, that exposes Washington political opportunism at its worst. I rate the book four stars as the book tends to downplay the significance of ethically borderline issues that occurred in Webb's tenure. To the credit of the book, Bizony does correctly point out that Kennedy was not the true champion of space he is revered to be today, but saw space exploration as a politically expedient course to follow, as did Johnson.

On the plus side, the author absolutely nails the deplorable history of NASA since Apollo and presents an accurate and devastating portrait of the Shuttle and International Space Station programs. Mr. Bizony correctly identifies the root cause of the problems in both programs as an unholy alliance of political objectives and unfocused technology. Webb's stature rose significantly in my eyes when I read Bizony's account of the hostility Webb had for Robert McNamara, another big government technocrat, but one without the vision of either Kennedy or Webb. NASA veteran Bob Seamans comes off as a much needed moderating force within the administration, and this book also details the fascinating relationship between Seamans and Webb.

Overall this is a noteworthy book. While it occasionally seems to come off the rails and get sidetracked, Piers Bizony always manages to tie up loose ends, resulting in a detailed and historically important book. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the space program, and further to students of management to learn not only the successes, but failures of the biggest single peacetime logistical puzzle in history.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Business and Political Side of Getting Man on the Moon, July 12, 2006

By 

G. P. Roberts "robbie" (Pinson, AL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Man Who Ran the Moon: James E. Webb, NASA, and the Secret History of Project Apollo (Hardcover)

With "The Man Who Ran the Moon: James E. Webb, NASA, and the Secret History of Project Apollo" Piers Bizony has written a wide ranging history about the business side of getting man on the moon. While many books focus on the astronauts and some focus on engineering, this book covers the political side of space flight. There are times when the author sounds as though he is losing his perspective as a historian/biographer and begins to expound on the virtues of the democratic party (Jim Webb was a lifelong Democrat) but after a few quick barbs about how things could be better today if we only learned from our past he rapidly gets back to the subject at hand.

The book does an excellent job of explaining John F. Kennedy and how he got behind the space program. The reader will see how without the soviets the American leadership would have never made space a priority. The "race" with the Russians has been well documented but this book goes deep into the American political system and how our government reacted to the race. The reader will see the give and take in Washington and how Webb spread the money around the country both in ways to gain political favor for the space program and in ways that made the most sense from a management position. Also covered is a fascinating meeting at the White House where Webb and JFK get into an argument over what the main goal of NASA should be and we see Webb not back down to the President of the United States.

The author goes to great lengths to explain the fall of Jim Webb and many pages are devoted to explaining the big political picture of lobbyist Fred B. Black, Jr. and LBJ protégé Robert "Bobby" Baker. While at times the reader may find themselves wondering what any of this has to do with Webb and NASA, all becomes clear in the end and the reader is rewarded with the knowledge and understanding of how something as simple as vending machines can start a series of events that will lead to the fall of a powerful man.

The selection of North American Aviation for construction of many parts of the rocket and capsule are covered as well as the fallout from the Apollo 1 fire. The Walter "Fritz" Mondale vs. Webb fight in the congressional investigations into the Apollo 1 fire are also well covered.

Overall this is an excellent book and is one that all space flight enthusiasts will want to add to their collection. I highly recommend it.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fundamentally excellent, but...., April 12, 2009

By 

T. Smith (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Man Who Ran the Moon: James E. Webb, NASA, and the Secret History of Project Apollo (Paperback)

The story of the political battles and management difficulties of the Apollo program has gotten short shrift in the overwhelming coverage of the technical aspects. This is quite understandable, but books like this are essential to covering the history of Apollo.
Regrettably, the wanderings into the personal politics and biases of the author caused me to suspect how much he might have covered up or eliminated as a historian, for personal reasons. For example, to blame the defunding of the Apollo program on the Nixon administration is extremely disingenuous, considering it was a Democratic Congress that refused to allocate the funds, preferring instead to shift the money to "problems here on Earth."
Similar issues throughout make this a history that needs to be approached with caution. For a reader knowledgeable of the real politics of the time, I'd give it 4 stars.