A brief kind journalistic history of the Apollo program (1957 - 1975). A review of book by Yaroslav Golovanov "The Truth About the "Apollo" Program. Battle for the Moon "
Аннотация: A brief kind journalistic history of the Apollo program (1957 - 1975). A review of book by Yaroslav Golovanov "The Truth About the "Apollo" Program. Battle for the Moon ".
A brief kind journalistic history of the Apollo program (1957 - 1975). A review of book by Yaroslav Golovanov "The Truth About the "Apollo" Program: Battle for the Moon".
In a relatively short period of time, I was able to read two excellent books. The first is a book about the revitalization of the Salyut-7 space station after emergency (Viktor Savinykh "Notes from a Dead Station", 1989 [Виктор Савиных 'Записки с мёртвой станции', 1989]). The second is the book by Yaroslav Golovanov "The Truth About the "Apollo" Program: Battle for the Moon" [Ярослав Голованов 'Правда о программе 'Apollo': Битва за Луну']. From the foreword by Yaroslav Golovanov, we can conclude that this book was largely written in 1975, but it was published in 1999 [2000].
In both cases, I did not see any excited fuss about these books, no loud accolades, no work of commissions for awarding literary prizes, no literary awards of any kind.
The goal of the Apollo program was a man's visit to the Moon and a successful return of a man to Earth.
The book by Yaroslav Golovanov, it seems to me, is painted with a slight sadness.
But this does not prevent the author from taking a good start, maintaining the right pace, and successfully completing his work. (The book has 352 pages).
He mentions both the Mercury program and the Gemini program. But Yaroslav Golovanov's focus is on the Apollo program.
The author manages to choose a reasonable level of detail. Yaroslav Golovanov tries to describe each cosmic flight (in the framework of the Apollo program) in the form of a small interesting plot.
The main focus of the author is not on the organization and not on the managers (they are mentioned briefly), but on the work of astronauts and their biographies.
The author tries to present astronauts as human as possible. Very kindly done. Let's not argue. Although we suspect that people in military uniform, especially those who participated in hostilities (there were some among the astronauts), have various qualities.
Space scripts, where astronauts act during space flights, are followed by short biographies of the characters. The effect of easy and interesting reading is achieved.
In part, this is reminiscent of Yaroslav Golovanov's attempt to switch readers' attention in "The Martian" (the biography by Golovanov of Friedrich Zander). In "The Martian", at the beginning of each chapter, the author gives fantastic letters from Mars ("biography of Zander-a fantastic letter-biography of Zander").
In the book about the Apollo program, the 'plot-biography-plot' technique of switching the readers' attention turned out to be many times more successful.
As the general scenario of the book develops, the author himself, in separate descriptions, becomes a participant in the events (as a really acting journalist).
Excellent, very high quality book.
It contains a huge amount of information of a general civilizational nature, information that, due to a number of circumstances, although not hidden according the direct order, but as if imperceptibly pushed into the background (farther and farther, until it turned out to be invisible).
The history of the landing of people on the Moon under the 'Apollo' program, in the USSR and in Russia partly resembles the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Eastern Republican intelligentsia and the Tsiolkovsky-Korolev space project ... Historical events and their participants (without an explicit order, instruction) are made if necessary transparent, as if invisible.
Golovanov's book gives such the minimum of information that should be known to any cultured person in any developed country. This book is useful for both schoolchildren and adults.
It is written in a good literary language, a good level of detail and the pace of presentation have been chosen. She certainly deserves literary awards.
The fact that the focus of attention is shifted from the issues of organization, financing, management, coordination to the activities of the direct executors - astronauts, and in astronauts (most of whom are people in military uniform) (some have experience in military operations), some of the readers may slightly to feel the romantic heroes from the works by Turgenev, - this does not spoil Golovanov's book, but even adds some pleasant fabulousness to it.
Let us also note the following detail. The author writes: "James Webb, the first person at NASA, was the head of the private company McDonnell Aircraft before joining this government agency."
In the publicly available biography of James Webb, I did not find such a biographical detail. In other words, additional verification of biographical details from Yaroslav Golovanov's book may not be superfluous. However, in the world there are no voluminous books for which separate clarifications would not be useful.
Overall assessment: a well-written, very useful, informative book containing general civilizational, general cultural information.
July 23, 2021 09:01
Translation from Russian into English: July 23, 2021 13:53.
Владимир Владимирович Залесский 'Краткая добрая журналистская история программы 'Аполлон' (1957 - 1975). Рецензия на книгу Ярослава Голованова 'Правда о программе 'Apollo': Битва за Луну''.