Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to reach the Moon. It was also the first crewed spacecraft to ever leave Earth's orbit. It was a truly amazing feat of intelligence and effort.

This is a very well thought out book; well-researched and well-written. The physical copy of the book has beautiful pictures from the preparations for the mission and the mission itself. And the audiobook has a great narrator.

This author also co-wrote "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13", which I highly recommend. ( )

Jeffrey Kluger is the co-author, with astronaut Jim Lovell, of Lost Moon (later renamed Apollo 13, after the movie based on it came out). Here, he returns to cover Lovell's previous mission, Apollo 8. It's a mission that lacks some of the cinematic drama of 13, but it's one that was thrilling in its own right, a remarkable achievement full of historic firsts: the first crewed mission to the moon, our first look at the far side of the moon, humans' first time orbiting another body in space, and the first time anyone was able to see the entire Earth as a tiny blue marble hanging in the darkness and, not incidentally, to snap its picture and bring that image home for the rest of us.

This is a very readable account of the mission, and one that captures some of that thrill... or at least, it did for me, but I am admittedly an easy sell on this stuff. It is perhaps not quite as detailed as one might expect for a book devoted solely to this one mission, but in fact, it covers a lot more ground than just Apollo 8 itself, which doesn't begin until maybe a third of the way through the book, after a thorough biography of mission commander Frank Borman and a discussion of the most relevant of the Gemini and the previous Apollo missions. I'd also say there's considerably more emphasis on the people than on the hardware, keeping things relatively light on the technical details, although when it does come up, all of the scientific and technical stuff is certainly explained clearly enough.

If you're interested in reading about the Apollo program in general, I always recommend Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon first and foremost, and I very much recommend Lost Moon, as well. But it's nice to see the first of the moon shots getting some love, and I'd say even those with even a casual interest in the subject could do much worse than to pick this one up. ( )

In truth, there's not a lot of detail in this book that is not better covered in others (particularly Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon. It's not that this book is bad or especially lacking. It just suffers by comparison. ( )

I watched First Man a couple of weeks ago, which tells the story of astronaut Neil Armstrong and the events leading up to the space mission that led him to walk on the moon. I enjoyed it, and I wanted to learn more about the space program as it actually was back in those days. Seeing as how the 60s were before my time, I found it fascinating to get a deeper look at the social impact that the space program had on the American people at the time.

Unfortunately, I found APOLLO 8 fairly dull. I struggled to get through it, and found my thoughts drifting often as I flipped the pages. I frequently had to go back and re-read entire paragraphs, realizing my mind had wandered and I couldn't remember a thing I just read.

I was hoping for a more engaging narrative, one that would make the subject matter come alive. It's such a fascinating time in history, yet in the retelling it loses its magic. The narrative bounces around from one event to another, from one person to another, with no link or continuity between them.

This book reads like a "Just the facts, Ma'am" retelling of what went on. And while I have little doubt it's historically accurate, it lacks heart, drama, and emotional engagement. Maybe I should just stick to movies on the subject. ( )

I have read a lot about the early days of NASA. Some accounts, like Collins' Carrying the Fire, are deeply personal and immersive. Or the broad scope of Cernan's Last Man on the Moon. This book is more distanced, a measured account of what happened.

Despite my foreknowledge, this book managed to include many a detail I had never read before, and never felt boring. In particular, I enjoyed the stories of the earlier Gemini and Mercury missions, that are so often overlooked in other books. Still, I would have preferred a somewhat more passionate delivery. But then, I did know the gist of the story already, and my experience might have been better if I hadn't. ( )