Manfred "Dutch" von Ehrenfried

The idea behind this book is great. How did NASA come into being? Why was it founded? What were the first few missions (notably, the Mercury program). However, the execution of this particular book is horrible. It just completely fails. I think this book could have used two or three competent editors. The narrative is not linear, nor does it follow any real organizational style, causing many sections to be repetitive and unnecessarily cross-referenced. It also makes it hard to follow, because one topic will be brought up briefly, several other topics and chapters will go by, and then that topic will be covered again in more detail. The author lists a seemingly unending amount of names, which is totally inappropriate for the main text of the book and should be in an appendix. I could go on and on. Seriously, this book was just TERRIBLE. I would not recommend it, even if you love the space program and NASA (as I do), because you will just wish you could get those few hours of your life back and spend them reading a much better book instead.… (more)