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EDITORIAL INFORMATION

After years of "routine" launches, the recent success of the Mars Pathfinder mission and troubles with the Russian Mir space station have turned the gaze of the public back toward space. The Pathfinder mission reflects a new set of priorities (cost-effectiveness, unmanned exploration) for NASA, an agency struggling to survive budget cuts and the end of the Cold War; while Mir represents the flawed fruits of a forty-year race between the superpowers. Walter McDougall's Pulitzer Prize-winning study of the space race explores both the strenghts and the weeknesses of the technocratic approach that made projects from Sputnik 1 to Apollo 11 possible, and points the way toward what the author calls "a second era of 'swashbuckling' in space."

(Extracted from the press release).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.

-Illustrations

-Abbreviations Used in Text.

-Preface to the Johns Hopkins Edition.

-Preface.

-Introduction.

-Part I. The Genesis of Sputnik.

-1- The Human Seed and Social Soil: Rocketry and Revolution.
-2- Political Rains and First Fruit: The Cold War and Sputnik.
-Conclusion.

-Part II. Modern Arms and Free Men: America Before Sputnik.

-3- Bashful Behemoth: Technology, the State, and the Birth of Deterrence.

-4- While Waiting for Technocracy: The ICBM and the First American Space Program.
-5- The Satellite Decision.

-Conclusion.

-Part III. Vanguard and Rearguard: Eisenhower and the Setting of American Space Policy.

-6- "A New Era of History" and a Media Riot.
-7- The Birth of NASA.
-8- A Space Strategy for the United States.
-9- Sparrow in the Falcon's Nest.
-10- The Shape of Things to Come.
-Conclusion.

-Part IV. Parabolic Ballad: Khruschev and the Setting of Soviet Space Policy.

-11- Party Line.
-12- The Missile Bluff.
-13- Hammers or Sickles in Space?
-14- Space Age Communism. The Khruschevian Synthesis.
-Conclusion.

-Part V. Kennedy, Johnson, and the Technocratic Temptation.

-15- Destination Moon.
-16- Hooded Falcons: Space Technology and Assured Destruction.
-17- Benign Hypocrisy: American Space Diplomacy.
-18- Big Operator: James Webb's Space Age America.
-19- Second Thoughts.
-Conclusion.

-Part VI. The Heavens and the Earth: The First Twenty-five Years.

-20- Voyages to Tsiolkovskia.
-21- The Quest for a G.O.D.
-22- A Fire in the Sun.

-Appendix.

-Abbreviations Used in Notes.

-Notes.

-Index.

OUR REVIEW

This book is a magnificient work devoted to space exploration. Now in its second/paperback edition (and a winner of the Pulitzer prize in history for 1986) intends to narrate us the history of the astronautics from the point of view of politics.

The author describes in full detail the Space Race. Most of the contents, therefore, belong to the political reasons for the space programs. The book reviews the history of the first artificial satellites, and explains the way in which the missile systems influenced the development of early space transportation systems.

The Heavens and the Earth is a very interesting work, which will no doubt delight those readers who love the history of astronautics.