Customer Reviews

One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong's Stellar American Journey

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

What a shame. This is one of the most amazing subjects in -- and out of -- this world, but this book is bland and sometimes wrong. What a waste. It's another tale of the X-15 and moon program, thinly told through Armstrong's resume. Yes there is some neat and new stuff here, but not much. It is all overshadowed by the errors and omisions. Yes, that is Buzz on the cover. The quote as Armstrong walked on the moon is wrong. Neil was not an 'ace' in Korea. In describing an Earth orbit docking, Wagener talks of 'twinkling' navigation lights -- but I thought the twinkling we see is an atmospheric effect. What did it really look like in orbit? I don't trust this book to tell me.

There are many great books on Armstrong's times and events, I'd buy many of them before this one. And wait for someone like Jeffrey Kluger, Neil Thomson or Andrew Chaikin to get us close to Armstrong.

Having worked on the launch of Armstrong's Apollo 11, I have more than a passing knowledge of the technical and historical facts about Apollo. That said, I finally gave up listing the errors I found in this book. While I think I learned new info about Armstrong, it is tainted by the many other errors. I found it to be written in several styles, often much more complex than it needed to be.

Save your money for the real Armstrong book due out soon.

The book cover tells us that Wagener was a journalist for 30 years. This book makes me wonder what kind of journalist he was. The book is full of inaccuracies. Some examples: he calls cosmonaut Alexi Leonov Alexi Leonor; he states that Christa McAuliffe was selected as the Teacher in Space because she won a "Why I Want to Go Into Space" essay. (cheapening her hard work and ultimate sacrifice); he writes the shuttle's solid rocket boosters fall into the ocean and are never used again even though they are recovered, refurbished, and reused. There is no documentation for statements he makes that contradict other records. This is poorly written and researched book. I have told my wife, who is the director of our local library, not to waste money buying the book. I won't donate my copy to the library. Ignore the book and read the books written by those who were a part of the effort of going to the moon.

I have followed NASA and the space program since I was a child, and have been waiting for years for a definitive biography to be written about Neil Armstrong. I bought this book the day it came out, and eagerly began reading it, only to have my eagerness rapidly turn to disappointment. Wagener is clearly writing on subject matter far outside his field of expertise, and commits many mistakes, misspellings, and factual inaccuracies to paper in this book. I was exasperated when Wagener constantly referred to Neil as a "jet ace" in Korea (he does not know what the term actually means, apparently), but was really appalled when he kept calling the "Lunar Module" the "Landing Module." The point to be made by these two (of many) examples is that if these are the errors I caught, how credible is the remainder of the book? How many errors did I miss? Surely the most egregious gaffe is putting the famous lunar photo of Aldrin on the cover of the book. I don't know why the publisher didn't have an astronaut or pilot review the manuscript for accuracy, but that would certainly be an excellent idea before a second edition is published. I am surprised that astronaut Bill Pogue, a relative contemporary of Armstrong, would endorse this book on the back cover.

To his credit, Wagener attempts to chronicle Armstrong's entire life from childhood to the present, and does manage to include a lot of relatively unknown information on Armstrong. I am sympathetic with the author's plight, in that while not a recluse, Armstrong is an intensely private man, which makes material and background information infinitely more difficult to gather. Obviously this is not an "authorized" biography with participation from Neil, but does cite several friends and acquaintances of Neil in the text. The pre and post Apollo 11 information is most interesting, and is the best work in the book. I have no doubt that the general storyline of the book is correct, but wish that I could find corroboration for some of the information presented here.

Certainly there are many better books on Apollo, if that is your primary interest: I particularly recommend books by Chaikin, Cunningham, Collins, and Lovell (who, amazingly, the author wrongly blames for the Apollo 13 accident) for very engaging accounts of the Apollo program, and the excellent Apogee Apollo Mission Reports series for technical information. Unfortunately if you want a biography of Neil Armstrong, you are pretty much stuck with this one. Hopefully sometime in the future a historian with a gift for writing will gain Armstrong's confidence and a genuinely authoritative biography will result; Neil Armstrong is an American hero and frankly deserves better than this.

Most of the general facts concerning the Apollo 11 mission are well known to those of us who lived through it and the later generation who read about it. Since Armstrong is, indeed, considered "reclusive" (at least according to current American pop culture standards) what we look for in current biographies is a closer study of the man's behavior and life AFTER the moon landing along with some of the intrigue before. We know all the rest. This book constantly reminds us that the Apollo 11 crew were not and aren't great buddies, but it never tells us why. It totally ignores the fascinating squabbles about who would actually take mankind's first step. It doesn't mention the crew selection process or cover the fact that at the time of their selection it was not known if they would be the first landing crew. As adoring of Armstrong the author seems to be he does not fully explore the astronaut's reluctance to totally cash in on his fame. No satisfying biography of this enigmatic man that really probes his personality and the details of his relationships with his colleagues has yet to appear. And while it is a known fact that there are frustratingly few still photos of Armstrong on the lunar surface the author didn't need to put Aldrin's picture on the cover albeit with the subject a tiny reflection in his visor. But perhaps this is symbolic of how little we learn from this hasty, ho-hum effort

As someone who would definitely list Neil Armstrong as one of the five human beings I would most like to meet, I was very disappointed with this account. The volume is filled with grammatical and technical errors that aerospace engineers like myself will find upsetting. There is no mention of some of the many things that other space histories have noted about Mr. Armstrong (such as his "finite number of heartbeats" theory regarding exercise), let alone the "hope you're having fun Mr. Gorsky" thing (at least state that it is one of those urban myths!). The most glaring mistake however, is that the author insists that Armstrong's first words after stepping onto the surface of the moon were "that's one small step for a man" This is absolutely incorrect - Armstrong forgot the "a" and according to other historical accounts of the space program, it was only several months later that he realized this and admitted to "flubbing" his great line. This doesn't of course, detract from Armstrong's great words or achievement, but it certainly does from this book.

Pass on this one and read some of the many other accounts of the space program, particularly Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon", Shepard and Slayton's "Moon Shot", and Michael Collins' "Carrying the Fire."

I must admit I was skeptical about this book upon seeing Buzz Aldrin on the cover instead of the books subject Neil Armstrong. I tried to give the author the benefit but upon reading the book it was just filled with too many factual errors to be considered an accurate account of Armstrong. Admittedly I am an aircraft and space enthusiast and someone who didn't know about the subject would not catch the most of the errors in this book, however, the erroneous information discounts the validity of the book in my opinion. It's a shame because what an intriguing character Neil Armstrong is!

Even if you ignore the dozens of technical errors, the fact that the author never interviewed the subject speaks volumes about the insights that aren't there. Hopefully some day Neil Armstrong will speak out and tell us about how he felt during various adventures of his life--the moon landing in particular. Having someone who has little knowledge of the aviation and space environment try to fake it just doesn't work.

Now how can I get my money back on this lemon?

Any would-be biographer of Neil Armstrong faces three major challenges. First, everyone knows (and many have written aboout) the central event of Armstrong's public life: the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. Second, Armstrong is a fiercely private person who rarely speaks in public and has never (to my knowledge) consented to an interview since leaving NASA. Third, science writers like Andrew Chaikin ("A Man on the Moon") and astronauts like Michael Collins ("Carrying the Fire") and Gene Cernan ("Last Man on the Moon") have set the bar *very* high for those who have come after them.

Leon Wagener's new biography of Armstrong fails on all three counts. It adds little to what we already know about Armstrong's career, offers minimal insight into Armstrong the person, and is marred throughout by a grating prose style and abominable editing.

Wagener's biography is a patchwork of interviews with friends and family members, quotes from newspapers and magazines, and gleanings from NASA records. This works reasonably well in the first and last sections of the book: Wagener is the first writer to deal in detail with Armstrong's life before coming to NASA (in the late 1950s) and after leaving it (in the early 1970s). Few readers, however, would pick up a book-length biography of Neil Armstrong *solely* to learn about those parts of his life. The method breaks down, however, in the long mid-section of the book, where the subject is Armstrong's years in the space program. Here, piecing together the facts is not enough: We already know the story. We *want* to know what Armstrong thought about it all, and that is the one thing that Wagener cannot deliver.

Even the relatively effective parts of the book are undone, however, by the quality of the writing. Writing about some of the most dramatic events of the twentieth century, Wagener tries relentlessly to pump up the drama by adding adjectives to every noun, adverbs to every verb, and extra clauses to every other sentence. There is nothing inherently wrong with this kind of dramatic prose--Norman Mailer used it in "Of A Fire On The Moon" and Tom Wolfe used it in "The Right Stuff"--but Mailer and Wolfe are masters of the English language. Wagener has a tin ear, and it shows on every page. The difference between the right word and the almost-right word, Mark Twain famously wrote, is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. This book is infested with lightning bugs.

It is also, sadly, infested with factual errors. Navigation lights twinkle in airless space, the invention of the turbojet engine is attributed to the wrong person (and placed in the wrong year), the X-15 rocket plane is misleadingly described as a hypersonic glider (a description that fits the never-built X-20 far better), and the Ford Trimotor is inexplicably described as a weapon of war (which the later and superficially similar Junkers Ju-52 eventually became, but the Ford never did).

Readers have not been well served by Wagener's editors, who should have at least thinned out the factual errors and style-deaf sentences. Nor have they been well served by the decision (by the author, editors, or both) to omit *any* form of references, bibliography, or even a complete list of interviewees. Readers interested in the sources of specific details are left with no way to *find* those sources. Especially given the numerous factual errors (which would make double-checking essential for anyone wanting to use the book as a reference), this is goes beyond frustrating into outrageous.

POSTSCRIPT (December 2005): James R. Hansen's biography of Armstrong, titled _First Man_, is now available. Hansen's work sets a new standard for astronaut biographies, and is superior to Wagener's in every way.

This is a painful book to read. The author attempts to use every word in his thesaurus, and the proofing is terrible. But what is most upsetting is the many factual errors in this book. What really makes me wonder is I know how many I caught, how many am I not aware of? I have been waiting for THE book to be written on Armstrong. I am still waiting. I should have been warned when I saw the cover with Buzz Aldrin pictured (true, that is Neil's reflection in Buzz's faceplate). Save yout time and money. This is perhaps the poorest bio on any astronaut I have ever read.