Reinventing NASA: Human Spaceflight, Bureaucracy, and Politics Book

All that you didn't know about the history of the Soviet/American space race. Really, I am surprised that there aren't more books about this rather major event in world history but, it seems to me anyway, that Matthew Brzezinski is one of the very first to put the extraordinary events leading up to America's entering the space age on paper.

The journey is a rather straightforward, but enjoyable, one. If it drags in parts - particular in the beginning - it's because a certain level of detail is paid to the rocket mechanics. For a couple chapters at least, we can get away with saying that "it's rocket science." I, for one, was far more interested in the politics of the space race rather than the science behind it and luckily for me, though the book initially lacked some of the, uh, thrust I would have liked to see, it quickly shot off into the stratosphere!

My biggest takeaway would have to be the knowledge that it was Khrushchev who seemingly kicked off the space race, and only due to the persistence of one of the Soviet Union's - at the time - most undervalued scientists. American President Dwight Eisenhower shrugged off the launch of the world's first satellite but due to the widely held public perception that the United States was falling behind the Soviet Union, finally agreed to up the budget to allow America's newly formed - and, at the time, competing - space agencies to do the same. Oh, and that America's own entry into the space age was launched in largest part due to a former Nazi.

One bit of information I found quite telling, is a quote that Brzezinski includes from Tom Margerison, a British science writer on assignment in Moscow, who says about the "Sputnik" launch "Nowhere else would you find a people who are able to carry out a complex project like launching a satellite, involving the close cooperation of scientists and engineers from many disciplines, yet who prove quite unable to organize efficient butcher shops."

Ha! Russia in a nutshell.

All in all, an entertaining and educational read!