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EDITORIAL INFORMATION

Contdown, A History of Space Flight is the most comprehensive account of mankind's drive to explore outer space. Drawing on new information-including recently opened Soviet archives and declassified CIA documents-this landmark book reveals the behind-the-scenes events that shaped both the US and Soviet space programs.

(Extracted from the press release).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.

-Acnowledgments.

-Introduction.

-1. Wonder-Weapons and Prison Camps: Rocketry under Stalin and Hitler.

-2. Ingenious Yankees: The Rise of America's Rocket Industry.

-3. Racing to Armageddon: The Superpowers Begin Their Missile Programs.

-4. The Mid-1950s: Spacecraft, Planned and Imagined.

-5. "The Russian Are Ahead of Us!": The Space Race Begins.

-6. A Promise of Moonglow: Space in the Wake of Sputnik.

-7. Afternoon in May: Kennedy Commits to the Moon.

-8. High-Water Mark: The Manned Moon Race.

-9. Lunar Aftermath: Space Stations and the Shuttle.

-10. Electrons in the Void: The Unmanned Space Programs.

-11. Space in Eighties: The Efforts Falter.

-12. Renewal and Outlook: Commerce and Cooperation in Space.

-Notes.

-Bibliography.

-Index.

OUR REVIEW

As the subtitle of this book says, Countdown is a history of space flight developed from the most current point of view. Orbital missions, both manned and unmanned ones, interplanetary probes, automatic stations etc., are widely described within a historical frame which happens to be perfectly integrated and coherent.

The reading of this book allows us to appreciate the relationships between politics, the military and astronautics, the motivations for the space race, the expansion of rocketry beyond the United States and the Soviet Union, etc. The text is really absorbing as well as interesting, and includes details up to now little known for the general readership, extracted from the recently unclassified files of the KGB and the CIA. Accompanying the author through his peculiar voyage through time, we will share with him the exciting moments of the beginnings of astronautics and we will follow him step by step towards our present days.