Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard Paperback – March 22, 2005

Alan Shepard is one of the quintesential American heroes. The first man in space (albeit on very short 15 minute flight), a man who has overcome medical adversity which forced him to be grounded only to come back and be one of only 12 men to actually set foot on the moon.
Light this Candle is the very well told story of his life and Neal Thompson has done an excellent job. The book reads more like a transcipt of a history channel documentary with each chapter leaving you with a taster of an event happening in the next, making you want to continue reading it. Even though the book is fairly hefty coming in at close to 500 pages, it doesn't take you long to get through it.
Neal Thompson actually wrote this book after both Alan and his wife had died and therefore had no direct input from either, but this leads to a few questions regarding the book. There are certain passages in the book that the writer could in no way have known and therefore you must assume that some artistic license has been used in order to make a rivetting story. In saying that Neal has extensively researched Alan Shepard and his Notes section goes on for close to 40 pages where he cites references.
Most of the details Alan's early life as a Navy pilot and his project mercury flight. I was very surprised that his flight to the moon aboard Apollo 14 only resulted in a couple of chapters. For all the detail put into his Navy career and his Mercury flight, there was very little information written about perhaps his best flight.
The book also deals with Alan's business dealings and philanthropy and love for golf (after all he was the person who played golf on the moon) after he left NASA and his brief and uncusseful fight with Leukemia.
Overall this is a rivetting read and I learned a lot about Alan Shepard through the book, but the couple of shortcomings stops it from being a five star read. Still highly recommended however.

Alan Shepard was America's first man in space and the only member of the Mercury Seven to make it to the moon. Space buffs will be annoyed by the author's unfamiliarity with some basics of the Space Race and lack of depth in some aspects of Shepard's personality, e.g. his gamesmanship, his angling for a second Mercury flight and for a moon landing. From what I've read, the author has recognized these faults and has corrected them in later editions. Still worth reading as this is the only biography devoted to Shepard, save for one geared toward elementary school readers in the Sixties.

I've read at least 20 astronaut related bios (with Michael Collins' Carrying the Fire still being my favorite), but I very much enjoyed this one as well. It has much less detail about the technology than most other astro-bios; this one is all about "the man" and his role in aviation history, in the space program, and in his own life. The writing was fast and interesting, and also believable. I read the e-book version that showed a percent complete that made me think I had much more to read. But the balance of the percentage was photos etc, which were OK, but I was sorry to see the book end so soon. I recommend it for both astronaut fans as well as anyone interested in reading about a one in a million guy.

Surprise of surprises. Amid the clutter of hastily-written self-serving memoirs from the early days of the space program, finally there appears something akin to solid history and literary proficiency. Neal Thompson was a Baltimore reporter when Alan Shepard died in 1998 of leukemia. Assigned to write an obituary, Thompson discovered that no first rate biography of the United State's first spaceman was then in print. Sensing an opportunity, Thompson, a free lance writer, began a six-year research project and produced a highly respectable treatment of a very private man. What had been known about Shepard were primarily his great successes and his notable shortcomings. Johnson tackles the great middle--and the puzzle that was Alan Shepard now begins to make sense.

In truth, there is probably misunderstanding about all of the early astronaut heroes, as if each was assigned a role in a bigger cosmic drama. Scotty Carpenter will always be the house philosopher, Gordo Cooper the hotdog, Gus Grissom the curmudgeon. Shepard's role was to be first, the best, the winner of a grueling marathon to ride the Redstone rocket--tiny by today's standards--for fifteen minutes on May 5, 1961. Given the unpredictability of the rockets of that era, the greater risk to the astronaut was on the ground than in space. This fact was appreciated in 1961, and being chosen number one was a statement from his superiors about his fortitude as much as his mastery of flying and technology.

Alan Shepard was born in 1923 in Derry, NH, to a somewhat removed, demanding father. Young Shepard inherited a fierce competitiveness and an independence that allowed him to pursue personal goals with little concern about his impression on others. This latter quality, to his advantage, is what set him apart from his archrival John Glenn, who did worry about public relations. Shepard was one of those rare men who had his cake and ate it, too: he achieved remarkable career goals while entertaining himself along the way with what can only be called oppositional defiance. In a strange twist of history, he actually pulled off the mischief that has always been attached to others like Gordon Cooper.

In this regard Thompson studies Shepard's military misbehavior and his philandering. The author's account of the future astronaut's brushes with military authority is detailed and rather surprising. One comes away with a sense that the New Hampshire flyboy's skills as a naval test pilot must have been noteworthy, outweighing numerous dangerous incidents of "flat-hatting" or strafing civilians on the ground. His cheating on his virtuous and devoted wife Louise--a spouse of the Lady Bird Johnson mold--is a blotch that time will probably not erase. Thompson does observe that Shepard's amorous sorties off the reservation were adolescent in nature; the astronaut apparently never engaged in any sort of long term relationship in which Louise was displaced.

Although there is in this work a lot about Shepard to dislike, the author clearly strove for a balanced presentation. Shepard appears to have made his peace with Glenn at the time of the Freedom Seven flight. After retirement he demonstrated a better than average interest in philanthropy and seems to have worked harder in his later years to enrich his marriage with Louise. Perhaps best known is his decade long battle with Meniere's Disease, and later with a form of leukemia. In some ways the Meniere's was more of a psychological jolt, coming as it did at the beginning of the Gemini, and ultimately, the Apollo Programs. Whatever his colleagues felt about him, Shepard was widely respected in the NASA management circle for outstanding cape com work in the troubled Carpenter and Cooper flights. With Glenn, his chief rival, out of the picture due to a head injury and political considerations, Shepard was the logical choice to command the maiden voyages of these new craft--and by implication become the first man to walk on the moon.

But this was not to be. For nearly a decade Shepard lost his license to fly any type of aircraft due to balance impairment [and other less known medical problems brought to light by the author.] Did he take this forced grounding graciously? Admittedly not. But the author assesses this period of Shepard's career with more depth than other commentators. He notes, for example, that Shepard had burned his bridges with the Navy by joining NASA and could not return to what seemed to be a straight road to admiralty status. While the Navy was no longer an option, Shepard was proving himself to be a better than average business man and becoming independently wealthy. Freed of aviator-astronaut responsibilities, he could have lived a highly lucrative lifestyle.

But he stayed with NASA, a nasty Don Quixote. Only a man in similar straits like Deke Slayton, himself medically grounded from space travel, could have understood and tolerated his subaltern's angry depression which alienated other astronauts in the program and at times rendered him a public relations nightmare. What sustained him through his bureaucratic Siberia was the desire to return to active status, but perhaps more strongly a desire to conquer his own medical problem. Shepard would admit that his selection for the first Mercury flight was the professional highlight of his career. Reinstatement to flight status for Apollo was for him a personal triumph of a different sort,

Shepard was due for some luck. Experimental surgery put him on line for Apollo 13, but management bumped him to 14 to absorb training and thus he avoided the near catastrophic events of unlucky 13. Shepard seemed grateful to be back--choosing for his Apollo 14 crew Stu Roosa, who had defined the art of avoiding Shepard in company hallways. Apollo 14 survived at least three mission-threatening crises on its way to the world's most famous tee shot. What the author shares about the moon landing mission is one of its least known achievements: it brought its commander to tears.

The book is written to explain or relate Alan Shepard, the Man, not the space program. It is well written and engaging.
A previous review has an issue with some minor details, such a addresses or nearby towns. Even if the details are incorrect, that does not mar the content or story of the Alan Shepard.

One of the few biographies of this person, and does a very balanced and informative job.