Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age
by Matthew Brzezinski
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Book Summary Information
Author: Matthew BrzezinskiEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-18
ISBN: 080508147X
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Times Books
Product features:
- Red and black hardcover with dust jacket scene of American and Soviet leaders.
Book Reviews of Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age
Book Review: " . . . it's a Commie sky and Uncle Sam's asleep."
Summary: 5 Stars
Those song lyrics were written by the governor of Michigan, one of many Americans who thought President Eisenhower was spending too much time golfing and not enough worrying about the Soviets and their Sputnik beeping above the earth.
Red Moon Rising is a detailed technological history, but it's even more interesting as a social and political history.
It was liberal Democrats like JFK and Lyndon ("I'll be damned if I sleep under a Red Moon") Johnson who used a nonexistent "Missile Gap" as a campaign issue against the Republican Eisenhower. That scared the American public, and the U.S. started on a road which led to the shooting down of a U-2 spyplane over the USSR, the U.S. stationing of Jupiter missiles in Turkey, the Bay of Pigs, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It's also interesting how Walt Disney (on his new TV show) created an image of Werner von Braun as a dispassionate scientist, bringing Tomorrowland's imagined future to reality. No mention of the slave labor von Braun used to build V-2 rockets for Hitler.
Or, as Basil Fawlty said in another context, "Don't mention the war."
But, as Matthew Brzeszinski shows in Red Moon Rising, you have to mention it. It was the personalities who came out of World War II - - people like Eisenhower, Stalin, Sergei Korolev, Werner von Braun, Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrenty Beria, and Allen Dulles - - who gave us the world of ICBMs, satellites, and Apollo Moon launches.
But not against our will. Beep. Beep.
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