The untold story of the historic voyage to the moon that closed out
one of our darkest years with a nearly unimaginable triumph
In August 1968, NASA made a bold decision: in just sixteen weeks, the
United States would launch humankind's first flight to the moon. Only
the year before, three astronauts had burned to death in their
spacecraft, and since then the Apollo program had suffered one setback
after another. Meanwhile, the Russians were winning the space race, the
Cold War was getting hotter by the month, and President Kennedy's
promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade seemed sure to
be broken. But when Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders were
summoned to a secret meeting and told of the dangerous mission, they
instantly signed on.
Written with all the color and verve of the best narrative non-fiction,
Apollo 8 takes us from Mission Control to the astronaut's homes, from
the test labs to the launch pad. The race to prepare an untested rocket
for an unprecedented journey paves the way for the hair-raising trip to
the moon. Then, on Christmas Eve, a nation that has suffered a
horrendous year of assassinations and war is heartened by an inspiring
message from the trio of astronauts in lunar orbit. And when the mission
is over--after the first view of the far side of the moon, the first
earth-rise, and the first re-entry through the earth's atmosphere
following a flight to deep space--the impossible dream of walking on the
moon suddenly seems within reach.
The full story of Apollo 8 has never been told, and only Jeffrey
Kluger--Jim Lovell's co-author on their bestselling book about Apollo
13--can do it justice. Here is the tale of a mission that was both a
calculated risk and a wild crapshoot, a stirring account of how three
American heroes forever changed our view of the home planet.
