Welcome to Litsy!

I found 4 cool books at the shop yesterday. The 1st was a biography of Rasputin. The 2nd was called How the Irish Saved Civilization: it was about how European art was preserved in Ireland during the Dark Ages. The 3rd was historical fiction called The Rebels of Ireland, but it was #2 in its series. The 4th was the one I ended up buying. It‘s an account of the Challenger disaster by Adam Higginbotham. His book on Chernobyl is great.

This is more than just about the Challenger but rather a comprehensive look at NASA 🚀🧑‍🚀👩‍🚀

The story of Christa McAuliffe‘s journey to be the first teacher in space. Well written, not too much fluff. The interesting part was reading about the aftermath and the last 2 minutes that I had never read about. We heard about the o-rings but the remains found tell a story of what those astronauts went through. 😣

We went today to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in VA. We went to mainly get to see the Space Shuttle Discovery (since the last bill that passed wants to move it to TX). I did pick this book up for my daughter (the book selection for girls was disappointing). We were at one of the discovery stations about black holes. The young guy asked my daughter if she knew what a black hole was. She said yes & explained. He‘s like OMG you‘re exactly

This is a terrific book - a narrative nonfiction history of the Apollo program told mainly through the astronauts. The book will win over jaded resistant readers and often keep us glued. The astronauts are super smart, but also foolish and emotionally distant.

One thing that struck me was the scale of the moonscape. Pike‘s Peak sized mountains outside the landers.

I really expected to love this book as I am a fan of the space program, but I found it to be a snoozer. There were some interesting antidotes, but, overall it felt disjointed and there was too many wives to keep straight. Loved all the photos.

My new audiobook, from 1993. Yes, I am partially listening to this because the author and I share last names.

The author goes into great detail about the history of NASA, government contractors, and astronauts. While the book is about the Challenger you learn a lot about the workings of getting all space shuttles into orbit. Once again we find out that greed and not listening to the experts is the thing that will doom a project every time. What a tragedy. Great work writing a riveting book that was never a slog to get through despite all the detail.

Probably if you are an American of a certain age you will have a Vivid memory of the day the Challenger exploded killing all 7 aboard. This book takes you through a history at NASA from the first Apollo to that awful day. He walks you through the science and the politics, the human error and hubris that lead to the explosion and what could have been done differently. Incredibly well researched and with easy to follow language and narrative.

#Read2025

I finished this last week but I‘m behind in reviews. Read for #MonthlyNonFiction2025 it was also one of my April #Roll100 picks (#16 Any Non-Fiction). It‘s an interesting juxtaposition to read this book while watching random famous people try to pass themselves off as astronauts & having Nancy Drew solve a mystery with exploding oranges at Cape Canaveral. I remember being in class (college) in the morning when they wheeled in a tv & ⬇️