It was all part of man's greatest adventure--landing men on the Moon and sending a rover to Mars, finally seeing the edge of the universe and the birth of stars, and launching planetary explorers across the solar system to Neptune and beyond.The ancient dream of breaking gravity's hold and taking to space became a reality only because of the intense cold-war rivalry between the superpowers, with towering geniuses like Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolyov shelving dreams of space t...

Originally a cavalryman, Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (1892-1918), nicknamed the Red Baron, transferred to the German Air Service in 1915. One of the first members of fighter squadron Jasta 2 in 1916, Richthofen quickly distinguished himself as a fighter pilot, becoming leader of Jasta 11 in 1917 and later leading the larger fighter wing known as “The Flying Circus” or “Richthofen’s Circus” whose bright-colored aircraft moved from one area of Allied air activity to another, set...

Using Space to Save EarthVeteran science journalist William E Burrows offers a bold new mission for the US space program: to protect the Earth from the ever-growing number of perils that threaten our way of life—and even our very survival.We are living through one of the most dangerous times in human history. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons technology are proliferating, and missile technology is falling into more and more hands. Extreme natural disa...

Presents a realistic, workable plan for defusing a potentially lethal threat from a rogue asteroid or comet. The explosion of a large meteor over Chelyabinsk, Siberia, in February 2013 is just the latest reminder that planet Earth is vulnerable to damaging and potentially catastrophic collisions with space debris of various kinds. In this informative and forward-looking book, veteran aerospace writer William E. Burrows explains what we can do in the future to avoid far more serious impacts...

A stunning investigation of the roots of the first moon landing forty years ago.This illuminating story of the dawn of the space age reaches back to the reactionary modernism of the Third Reich, using the life of “rocket scientist” Wernher von Braun as its narrative path through the crumbling of Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazi regime. Von Braun, a blinkered opportunist who could apply only tunnel vision to his meteoric career, stands as an archetype of myri...

Chief engineer Thomas J. Kelly gives a firsthand account of designing, building, testing, and flying the Apollo lunar module. It was, he writes, “an aerospace engineer’s dream job of the century.” Kelly’s account begins with the imaginative process of sketching solutions to a host of technical challenges with an emphasis on safety, reliability, and maintainability. He catalogs numerous test failures, including propulsion-system leaks, ascent-engine instability, stress corrosion of the alum...

A landmark work of narrative history, Paris 1919 is the first full-scale treatment of the Peace Conference in more than twenty-five years. It offers a scintillating view of those dramatic and fateful days when much of the modern world was sketched out, when countries were created—Iraq, Yugoslavia, Israel—whose troubles haunt us still.Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize • Winner of the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize • Win...

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYThe New York Times Book Review • The Economist • The Christian Science Monitor • Bloomberg Businessweek • The Globe and MailFrom the bestselling and award-winning author of Paris 1919 comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, a fascinating portrait of Europe from 1900 up to the outbreak of World War I.The century since the end of the Napoleonic wars had been the most peaceful era Europe h...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTUREA mission to Mars. A freak accident. One man’s struggle to survive. From the author of Project Hail Mary comes “a hugely entertaining novel that reads like a rocket ship afire” (Chicago Tribune).“Brilliant . . . a celebration of human ingenuity [and] the purest example of real-science sci-fi for many years . . . utterly compelling.”—The Wall Stre...

A breathtaking exposé that reads like a thriller, this is a stunning depiction of just what happened in Roswell, New Mexico, all those years ago and how the effects of this mysterious unidentified aircraft crash are still relevant today.Former member of President Eisenhower’s National Security Council and the Foreign Technology Desk in the United States Army, Colonel Philip J. Corso was assigned to work at a strange crash site in Roswell in 1947. He had no idea tha...

The bestselling investigation into NASA, hidden space history, and the evidence for extraterrestrial structures on the Moon and Mars. Dark Mission by Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara is a bestselling exploration of alternative space history, NASA controversies, and the enduring debate over anomalous structures photographed on the Moon and Mars. Blending archival research, mission analysis, and speculative interpretation, the authors examine decades of space-program imagery and data to arg...

This Pulitzer Prize finalist provides the definitive history of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, from the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51**.**No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history about the organization, New York Times best...