100 books like All-American Boys

This is one book I couldn’t put down. Even though Michael Collins might be considered one of the "forgotten” astronauts (as the lone astronaut from the seminal Apollo 11 mission who didn’t get to land on the moon), his book provides an amazing and amusing look at what it’s like to be an astronaut.

His conversational writing style is engaging, witty, and insightful, and I loved his self-deprecating humor. I classify this book as the best astronaut biography ever written and Collins as one of the most endearing icons in history.

I visited Grumman in Bethpage, New York after Apollo 14 and had the rare privilege of entering the cavernous cleanroom where the final moon landers were being assembled. Grumman loved me because my software fix had kept their defective switch from ruining the mission. I believe Tom Kelly was at the table in the executive dining room that day. His book is a gritty account of how, finally, after many failures, many frustrations, NASA pressure, managerial chest-thumping, test and retest, the lunar modules were finally delivered. Even the book’s flaws are interesting, such as how he spins certain inflight events, of which I believe my own account is more balanced.

This is a buddy story, two guys telling their parallel stories in interleaved fashion. Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov flew in Earth orbit three times and made the first spacewalk. Dave Scott went to the Moon as commander of Apollo 15. They are the same age, both kids old enough to remember the Second World War. Both military pilots who might have been ordered to fight each other, who instead through the adventure of spaceflight became friends. They are thoughtful, open-minded, generous. Here, in their own words, they share their perspectives. 

Eldon Hall led the development of the Apollo Guidance Computer, that one-cubic-foot device with 76kb of memory that navigated, guided, and controlled each of the Apollo spacecraft — the machine that I helped program. His book is both a detailed description of the Apollo computer and a history of its development. The most dramatic chapter chronicles the bold decision to use integrated circuits in the design of the computer — all of the same type, to encourage the vendor to keep making them — although that technology was then anything but reliable. 

As one of the 8,000 people who applied (and wasn’t selected) as an astronaut in 1978, I wondered what made the six women chosen, including Dr. Seddon, stand out.

How about the stamina and skill to handle 24-hour shifts saving gunshot victims in the emergency room? How about pushing her body to the limit to hold her breath and swim two lengths underwater? And then there is the sheer determination that allowed her to endure almost drowning when the spacesuit she had to wear was sized for a man.

She not only was one of the first women astronauts, but she also married an astronaut and raised a happy family during the high-pressure Shuttle era. In my opinion, Rhea Seddon’s story should be required reading for all Americans!

It seems incomprehensible that I didn’t read this book until my test pilot husband died. He’d applied to NASA, just before the plane crash.

This book is popular in the aviation community because Tom Wolfe nailed it—the pilot lingo, the tall tales from the cockpit, the egos, the spot-on descriptions, and mostly, the brilliance and love of adventure. I’ve spent most of my life around pilots (I’m a licensed private pilot) and Wolfe gets it. He is an extremely talented writer who helped bring Chuck Yeager’s ultra-cool bravery into the mainstream. Wolfe traces the successes and horrific failures of the early NASA program, weaving characters together in a way that is more action fiction than true life. This book will change the way you look at airplanes and the people who fly them. 

My late husband was buried with his tattered copy of The Right Stuff.

From the time he was young, Edward White loved outer space and dreamed of traveling there. In simple poetic language, this book tells how Edward’s life led him to serve in the U.S. Air Force and ultimately in the NASA program, where he became the first American to walk in space. Nonetheless, the book emphasizes that while he was always reluctant to stop doing anything related to outer space, he was eager to return from his journey to spend time with his greatest treasure of all—his family! Back matter gives more details about White’s life and a timeline of his accomplishments.

For starters, I recommend everything Mary Roach has ever written. Ever since I read Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers in college, I’ve made sure to grab Roach’s new books the week they’re released. Her self-deprecating sense of humor always cracks me up, and she does such an amazing job of capturing both the science and the culture of the fields she studies. 

This book is filled with incredible and fun stories you’ve likely never heard before. Why does the Japanese astronaut selection process include making 1,000 origami cranes? Why were the “walls spattered with blood” in a 1999 space station simulation? Why did the astronauts aboard Apollo 12 spend part of their homeward journey naked? Check out her book to find out! 

Okay, so you’ve read Dune, you’ve read Starship Troopers, you’ve read 2001: A Space Odyssey, and maybe you’ve even read From Earth to the Moon and The First Men in the Moon. Seen the movies, too (or maybe you cheat and say you’ve read the books when you’ve only seen the flicks). Bet you think that makes you an expert on science fiction about space, right? Not even close! If you want to read more than just the well-known classics everyone else has, find these books. Some have become obscure and are now out of print, but they’re not hard to find; try ABE, eBay, and local second-hand bookstores. They’re worth searching for, and then you’ll really have something to talk about.

This high-tech thriller about three astronauts stuck in Earth orbit aboard an Apollo spacecraft (in an earlier version, it was about one astronaut in a… show more.

Lynn Sherr is a reporter, and was a friend of Sally Ride. Between knowing Ride personally and her many interviews with Ride’s partners, family, and friends, Sherr was able to write a remarkably in-depth biography of a person who largely avoided sharing personal information publicly.

I learned a lot about Ride I didn’t previously know, like the fact that the US’s first woman astronaut was also LGBTQIA+! She was a trailblazer on so many fronts.