Product Description

From the author of 'Seven Wonders of the Industrial World', the paperback edition of the TV tie-in charting the shocking but true story behind the space race -- and the ruthless, brilliant scientists who fuelled it. With the end of the Cold War it is now possible to reveal its generation of secrets and cover-ups, bringing an historical opportunity: the unmasking of the true heroes and villains behind the race to be the first to conquer space. This is one of the greatest stories in history, beginning in the throes of the Second World War and spanning through to the moon landings. With the US and Russia pitched against one another during the Cold War, it was the race to create the most powerful rocket and dominate the world, culminating in 1969's 'giant leap for mankind'. The most pioneering and high-risk experiments ever undertaken cost untold millions -- and hundreds of lives, as mistakes were made, some too horrific to be made public. It is a tale that plays out against a backdrop of communism and espionage. Buried within this multi-million-dollar battle between nations, are the dramatic accounts of the individuals who seek to be the winners at any cost. With ex-Nazi Wernher von Braun on the American side pitted against the enigmatic Sergei Korolev on the Soviet side, this revealing new history shows the extent to which politics and personal ambition combined to create an explosive race for the glory of victory.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #167337 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
'Lucid, pacy and readable.' Bryan Appleyard, New Statesman 'This fascinating book illuminates the complex relations between Germany, America and Russia during the space race of the Cold War years!'The Space Race' is much sharper than the usual television tie-in ! Heroes, villains and victims populate this gripping story.' Maggie Gee, Daily Telegraph Praise for Deborah Cadbury: 'The Lost King of France': 'This is history as it should be. It is stunningly written, I could not put it down. This is the best account of the French Revolution I have ever read.' Alison Weir 'The Dinosaur Hunters': 'Beautifully structured and sympathetically narrated, Cadbury's book benefits from having a subject that successfully brings together science, suspense and sentiment. Something for everyone, then.' Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times

Bryan Appleyard, New Statesman
'Lucid, pacy and readable.'

About the Author
Deborah Cadbury is the award-winning TV science producer for the BBC, including Horizon for which she won an Emmy. She is also the highly- acclaimed author of 'The Feminisation of Nature' and 'The Dinosaur Hunters'.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic
Having an interest in all things involved in space I was eager to read this book although I did expect it to be a hard read that the history books that I have read in the past.
Imagine my suprise therefore when I started reading it and found myself engrossed in it form thte outset.
It tracks the progress of the space programmes in the US and in the USSR mainly concentrating on the two chief rocket designers in the seperate countries. This book reads like a novel and is often filled with more background information (the power struggles that existed with the soviets for example are particularly interesting) than was expected. This is good as it gives a fuller account of the people involved in the two programmes.
The book finishes quite abruptly with the landing of the Apollo 11 mission. This is no so much of a problem as the mission signified the end of the space race and has been covered well in many other books. However, there seems to be more of an emphasis on the soviet space programme. Reasons for this may be due to the fact that much of the information regarding the soviet programme was kept classified for a long period of time whereas the American space programme was a very public affair.
Finally this is a well written book that reads much more like a novel than a historic account on the 20-30 years prior to the Apollo 11 landing. This is a book that would therefore appeal to all who have an interest in the space race.

Fantastic! really enjoyable read
This book is really fascinating to anyone who is interested in the "space race" the author has done a wonderful job of showing the human sides of the amazing people who build and flew in these rockets. It's far more detailed then the TV series and is certainly a good companion to accompany it. From the moment I got this book in my hands I couldn't put it down. It's the best book I have read since Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" I will defiantly be looking into other works by this author

The Two Instruments of Fate
Reading this story, one finds it hard to shake off the feeling that there was some kind of fate in the stories of both Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolev. Both were energetic, brilliant space visionaries, with the clout and charisma to see their dreams through, both should have died young, in the conflagrations of Stalin purge and war respectively, yet they didn't ... and was it a coincidence that both ended up on each side of the Cold War superpower divide, so both had both the political and monetary backing necessary to achieve their hugely expensive dreams? It was as if Something had decreed that it was necessary for humankind to get into space, and therefore Korolev and von Braun were selected by it to lead the way.

Cadbury's book is a captivating and clear-eyed account of this extraordinary tale. It is so good to see, at long last, a book that is not exclusively concerned with the American side of things, we are all getting a bit bored with that. Wonderful as it was, the American venture was not the only one, and it was, in any case, nowhere near as interesting as the Russian story. Due to the hardships the Russians endured, their tale has a depth and poignancy lacking in that of their rivals, not least because of the fact that Sergei Korolev was so much more attractive a personality than von Braun. Cadbury describes Korolev's suffering at the hands of Stalin's minions with great sensitivity, and her account of his early death is quite heartbreaking.

However, there are some caveats. For example, Cadbury makes several careless mistakes in quoting her sources - for example, when Korolev, knowing he was about to die, chose to relate his experiences in the Gulag to his two favourite cosmonauts, Yuri Gagarin and Alexei Leonov, Cadbury states that he started to talk at four a. m, while Leonov, who was there, said he started talking at midnight and went on till four. This may seem a minor nit-pick, but it does seem to show that Cadbury did not pay proper attention to her primary sources.

Also, extraordinarily, Cadbury makes no connection between the agonizing heart condition (among other health problems) that Korolev suffered as a result of his gruesome ordeal in the worst of the Gulag camps - Kolyma. The implication given in the book is that they came out of nowhere. Korolev's illness and early death was a direct result of his cruel imprisonment, a fact that Cadbury does nothing to clarify. One would think that she is trying to excuse the evil, anti-human political philosophy that allowed such monstrous crimes to not only flourish but go unpunished. She does not make clear that Korolev's successes were in spite of the Communist society in which he lived, not because of it.

She also fails to relate another fascinating tale - the way in which Wernher von Braun was forced out of NASA once the moon race was won and he was no longer of any use to them. Whatever you may think of von Braun, this was out of order. And, while she goes into poignant detail about Korolev's last days, von Braun's own terrible death, from cancer, is only vaguely touched upon.

Yet the Americans richly deserved to win the space race - they did not cruelly abuse their scientists, or allow petty jealousies to sabotage their efforts, as the Soviets did. But it is good to hear of the other side of the story at last; and, despite some minor quibbles, it is difficult to imagine a more well-written and captivating account than this.