Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A good topic but questionable facts, November 1, 2002
As a longtime space buff, I looked forward to reading this book about an event that happened before I was born. I found two factual errors that unfortunately left me questioning the authenticity of other facts in the book. On page 41, the book reads "In 1968, as Apollo 11 lifted off for the Moon..." and on page 236 it states "When the space shuttle was first launched in 1982..." These events, of course, happened in 1969 and 1981, and rank among the most important space events ever (along with Sputnik's launch, certainly). How these two dates could be incorrect makes me just a little skeptical that other things I read in the book might just be a little off as well. What if a book on early US history listed Jefferson as the 4th President? I really wanted to like this book, and altough it tended to be a little dry at times, I found many interesting stories and details, but two blatant factual inaccuracies that made it past however many people they made it past before the book's printing left me a little wary of the rest of the content. I don't want to malign the entirety of the author's work for what might be no more than typos, but I just could not get past those two.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sputnik is Still Flying, October 29, 2001
On 4 October 1957, the world woke up in the space age. The first artificial satellite (people were originally calling it an artificial moon) had been successfully launched by the Soviet Union. It weighed less than 200 pounds and was only as big as a basketball, its batteries died after three weeks whereupon it went silent, and after three months aloft it disintegrated upon reentry into the atmosphere. This tiny and ephemeral ball made huge differences in science and the world political climate, and in Sputnik: The Shock of the Century (Walker & Co.), Paul Dickson has reviewed them all. He has also given a history of what led up to successful launches of satellites in both the Soviet Union and the US, so that his book is a useful review not just of the first satellite but of twentieth century space exploration in general. The Russians already had a relatively long history of thinking about space before Sputnik went up. The visionary Tsiolovsky was a self-taught scholar who in 1898 created the first formula to specify what sort of power would be needed to send an object up so as not to fall down again. He described that this could be accomplished by a "reaction machine," which we know as a rocket. He never got to use models, but his first sketch of a spaceship had fuel tanks of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, just as the shuttle uses. He described the use of booster rockets to attain escape velocity. Of course, Dickson tells the fascinating story of our own neglected rocket man, Robert Goddard, who made real rockets and gained over 200 patents, but mostly got only posthumous credit for his accomplishments. And then there was Sergei Korolev, a Red Army Colonel, who, as "chief designer" of the Soviet rocket program, was the man responsible for Sputnik, and for Gagarin's 1961 spaceflight. Little was known about him at the time, because the Soviets wanted their space efforts to be seen as a communal, rather than an individual, effort, and they thought that if he were known, he would be a target for CIA assassination. He had also been imprisoned in the Gulag when Stalin came to believe that rockets would be used to overthrow the government. Dickson reviews the worry with which Americans viewed Sputnik, and how Eisenhower (who was criticized for not worrying enough) actually was pleased that it opened up space for spy satellites. American science and technology were in trouble in some ways. Dickson details the rivalry between the services to claim space as a theater of operations, and the rivalry between military and civilian agencies. There were problems of underfunding of basic research. Science within education needed higher priorities, and for many schools, the Sputnik era was the first time that Darwin could be mentioned. Sputnik resulted in a meaningful American space program, and Dickson's readable and informative re-evaluation of the repercussions of the little aluminum ball shows that it affects us still.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Technological marvel? World changing event? Both?, September 14, 2004
Paul Dickson argues in his book "Sputnik: The shock of the Century" that this little 184 pound satellite launched by the Soviets in October 1957 changed the world. He says that it changed the way Americans thought, and that it paved the way for our own space program.
I agree that it was a shocking event and quite a blow to the pride of the United States - to see the Soviets launch an artificial Earth orbiting satellite before we could do it? Unheard of! I don't think that it changed the world quite as much as Dickson claims, however.
At the close of his book, Dickson says that the two most important marvels of the 20th century were Sputnik and the Internet. Certainly leaves a lot of room for discussion, doesn't it?
I believe that Dickson has done us quite a service by writing this book - it is a great history both of the space race up to, and including, an introduction to both the Apollo and Gemini missions of the 1960's, as well as the social history that acompanied this massive PR coup by the Soviets.
I especially enjoyed the way that Dickson explained how much America focused on education (science, math, and the like) after the Soviets beat us into space. I also tremendously enjoyed the role of Werner Von Braun in our own efforts to launch a satellite. However, I think that this book easily could have been much, much larger in order to adequately cover the primary topic - Sputnik and all of the ramifications of that fateful day in October.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
