A Man on the Moon

I have read many books about the Apollo astronauts and their journeys to the Moon, but this very readable book is the only one that took me along on the greatest human adventure in space.

Chaikin also left me knowing each one of these astronauts better than I did when I started.

This is, hands down, the single best book about the Apollo Moon missions ever written.

Comprehensive, accurate, and utterly engrossing, Chaikin takes you back to the 1960s and 70s and to the Moon to tell the story about how humans visited their first alien world.

Far and away my favorite book on the topic — and as we begin the journey to go back to the Moon, a great time to read up on when we did it first.

I loved this book because it reignited my childhood obsession with the Apollo program and filled in many of the gaps in my understanding. Besides the technical hurdles which had to be overcome, it illustrates the challenges of a crash project populated by type-A personalities.

Beginning with the Apollo 1 fire and its aftermath, it offers engaging insights into the planning, the people, and the execution of each mission. The chapter devoted to Apollo 12 is especially entertaining, as Pete Conrad was one of the most colorful characters in the program and left an indelible stamp on their mission (propeller… show more.

A Man on the Moon is the best history of the Apollo program that I have ever read. Chaikin writes with the authority of an historian and the heart of a poet. The missions and the astronauts are brought vividly to life, and their adventures are recounted in loving detail. Several times over the course of my undergraduate engineering studies when things got tough, I would take A Man on the Moon out of the engineering library and it would never fail to inspire me. The book formed the basis for the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon… show more.

Between 1968 and 1972, 24 Apollo astronauts flew to the moon and 12 of them landed to first explore its surface. By the late eighties when it seemed nobody cared about the Apollo era missions, Andy had the vision, persistence, and respect for history to research, track down, and by 1994, interview each of those astronauts in their own words. Knowing Andy, it is understandable why these essentially forgotten first explorers to another celestial body, including engineers and scientists, opened up and provided remarkable unscripted accounts. It is a transcendent portrait of the Apollo era that continues to inspire the… show more.

If there was one book that got my coauthor Jeremy and I to start thinking about a novel based on a return to the Moon, it was this one. Chaikin’s classic history on the entire Apollo program looks at how NASA successfully landed astronauts on the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972. Chaikin’s book is not a dry history but a thrilling, in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at how the missions were proposed, conceived, and executed. A must-read for lovers of history, space exploration, science, and even science fiction.