Title: In the Shadow of the Moon: America, Russia, and the Hidden History of the Space Race by Amy Cherrix
Book Beginnings quote:
When the Polish lab technician plunged his hands into the toilet bowl at a University of Bonn bathroom to retrieve a bundle of half-flushed papers, he couldn't have known he held a clue to one of Hitler's darkest secrets.
Friday56 quote:
On May 31, a nine thirty p.m., the last train, loaded with the life's work of Werher von Braun, departed Mittelwerk just hours before the Soviets arrived.
Summary: The Space Race, the most ambitious race ever conducted by humankind, was masterminded by two rocket engineers on opposite sides of the Cold War: Wernher von Braun, a Nazi officer now living and working in America, and Sergei Korolev, a Russian rocket designer. Von Braun became a hero for his role in helping America land a man on the moon first. Korolev toiled in obscurity, even in his own country, right up to his death. The two men had so much in common, however. Both men were brilliant and their inventions helped shape the science of spaceflight and modern warfare. Their stories, especially Korolev's, have been hidden from the history textbooks. This book brings their stories to light and the space race will never be viewed with the same lens again.
Review: As my role as a judge for the Cybils Award is wrapping up for another year I have one more book to review, this book In the Shadow of the Moon. Though I admit that a book about the space race and about landing on the moon isn't exactly an issue that most teen readers are chomping to get their hands on, there will undoubtedly be several students in every high school who will be very excited to learn more about the early inventors of rockets and what went into the design process which allowed man to fly to the moon and back. I confess I had a slow start with this book but found myself quite captivated as I read on, learning new, and sometimes disturbing, information about the space race. Of interest to me, especially with the rise of Neo-Nazism today in America, was Wernher von Braun's associations with German Nazi's during WWII and his use of 'slave' labor by Jewish holocaust victims in his rocket factory. Quite a bit of the information in this book would be great fodder for classroom discussions on ethics.
What I liked about the book:
- It is well-written and impeccably well-researched.
- Over twenty five pages of author's notes, end notes, bibliography, and an index are included to assist future researchers on the topic.
- The information is presented in an accessible way for non-sciency people, yet not in a simplistic way.
What I didn't like about the book:
- As I mentioned in my review, the book was a slow starter for me. My reading speed and interest didn't pick up until around page 100 (out of 275 pages of material.)
Target audience: YA readers, aged 14-18 years old, with crossover appeal for adults.
-Anne
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