Space Memoir

On February 20, 1962, John Glenn became a national star. That morning at Cape Canaveral, the small-town boy from Ohio took his place atop a rocket and soared into space. The Last American Hero is a stunning examination of the layers that formed the man: a hero of the Cold War, a two-time astronaut, a veteran senator, a devoted husband and father, and much more.

Jake "Facebreaker" Sharkar lives his life between the lines of law-and-order and outright villainy. Fresh from committing murder, he finds that his employer has a proposition for him. Instead of paying his fee, Jake has the opportunity to help find and share in the profits of recovering the lost treasure of Solomon Lake. A long journey, an unexpected accomplice, and wandering aliens will not keep Jake from garnering glory and promised wealth. Make no mistake, it is unwise to double-cross a man like Jake. And, if those who thought they could double, or triple, or even quadrupole-crosshim, ...

Based on his historic mission to the International Space Station, Ask an Astronaut is Tim Peake's guide to life in space and his answers to the thousands of questions he has been asked since his return to Earth. With explanations ranging from the mundane (how do you wash your clothes or go to the bathroom while in orbit?) to the profound (do humans have a duty to explore the unknown?), all written in Tim's characteristically warm style, Tim shares his thoughts on every aspect of space exploration.

Few organizations solve as many impossible problems as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and nobody knows more about leading rocket scientists to unlikely breakthroughs than Adam Steltzner. As the phase lead and development manager for EDL (entry, descent, and landing) of the Curiosity rover to Mars, Steltzner spearheaded the creation of one of engineering's wackiest kluges - the sky crane, which allowed the heaviest rover in the history of space exploration to land on Mars unscathed.

In this uniquely American memoir, Homer "Sonny" Hickam beautifully captures a moment when a dying town, a divided family, and a band of teenage dreamers dared to set their sights on the stars. Looking back after a distinguished NASA career that fulfilled his boyhood ambition, Hickam shares the story of his youth, taking listeners into the life of the little mining town and the boys who came to embody both its tensions and its dreams.

Wally Schirra was the only one of the original seven NASA astronauts to command a spacecraft in all three pioneering space programs - Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. This chronicle of his experiences takes us into space on Schirra's 1962 Mercury flight that orbited Earth six times and aboard Gemini for the first rendezvous of two manned craft in space.

For the larger-than-life personalities now staking their fortunes on the development of rocket ships, the new race to explore space could be a dead end, a lucrative opportunity - or the key to humanity's salvation. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos take center stage in this fast-paced narrative as they attempt to disrupt the space economy, feed their own egos, and maybe even save the world.

Their wings were weak, their talons broken…yet they flew the Soviets into winning the war against the Nazis. They were ignored, laughed at, and forced to do chores beneath their ranks. Why? They were the "weaker" gender. Despite being capable, they were initially denied entry into combat. And when they did enlist, their treatment only worsened: They were assigned worn-out uniforms and left to the mercy of rusted equipment on the battlefield. These adversities didn’t stop the Soviet female fighters from going ahead and showing unprecedented excellence in warfare.

In 1610, Galileo published the Siderius nuncius, or Starry Messenger, a "hurried little masterpiece" in John Heilbron's words. Presenting to the world his remarkable observations using the recently invented telescope, Galileo dramatically challenged our idea of the perfection of the heavens and the centrality of the Earth in the universe. Indeed, the appearance of the little book is regarded as one of the great moments in the history of science.

In early 1985, Michael J. Fox was one of the biggest stars on television. His world was about to get even bigger, but only if he could survive the kind of double duty unheard of in Hollywood. Fox's days were already dedicated to rehearsing and taping the hit sitcom Family Ties, but then the chance of a lifetime came his way. Soon, he committed his nights to a new time-travel adventure film being directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg--Back to the Future.

As command module pilot of Apollo 17, the last crewed flight to the moon, Ron Evans combined precision flying and painstaking geological observation with moments of delight and enthusiasm. As a patriotic American in charge of command module America, Evans was nicknamed “Captain America” by his fellow crew members.

February 1, 2003. A light flashed over a Texas sky and twisted metal rained across the countryside. As images of the wreckage from the Space Shuttle Columbia streamed across the nation's television screens, they became forever burned into our memories. But behind those images were stories that remained untold...until now.

A Mural in Space is a healing memoir in three acts, exploring Kameron Tyler’s childhood, his teenage years, and the transformative moments that reshaped his identity. Tyler eloquently articulates the feelings of becoming untethered from reality—a floating anxiety that is both uniquely personal and universally relatable. He examines the coping mechanisms he developed while navigating this vast expanse of uncertainty, through a journey which includes self-discovery, attachment, sex, addiction, friendship, betrayal, loss, and grief.

In 1945, Gwen Moffat deserted from her post as dispatch rider in the Army and went to live rough in Wales and Cornwall, climbing and living on practically nothing. She hitch-hiked her way around, travelling from Skye to Chamonix and many places in between, with all her possessions on her back. When the money ran out, she worked as a forester, went winkle-picking on the Isle of Skye and did a stint as an artist's model. And always there were the mountains, drawing her away from a "proper" job.

Antes de conquistar Marte, debemos aprender a sobrevivir en el espacio. Un libro ejemplar sobre el triunfo de la imaginación humana, la fuerza de voluntad y las maravillas infinitas de la galaxia. Scott Kelly es el hombre que más tiempo ha pasado en el espacio, 340 días, durante los cuales ha visto y vivido cosas que prácticamente ninguno de nosotros veremos o experimentaremos nunca.

Deborah Santana is best known for her marriage to music icon Carlos Santana, a 30-year bond that endures to this day. But as a girl growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s, daughter of a White mother and a Black father, the legendary blues guitarist Saunders King, her life was charged with its own drama long before she married.

Everywhere he goes, crowds gather to meet Buzz Aldrin. He's a world-class hero, a larger-than-life figurehead, and the best known of a generation of astronauts whose achievements surged in just a few years from first man in space to first men on the moon. Now he pauses to reflect on and share what he has learned, from the vantage point not only of outer space but also of time: Still a nonstop traveler and impassioned advocate for space exploration, Aldrin will be 86 in 2016.

Christened a potential saviour of Silicon Valley's start-up culture, Adam Neumann was set to take WeWork, his office-share company disrupting the commercial real estate market, public, cash out on the company's $47 billion valuation, and break the string of major start-ups unable to deliver to shareholders. But as employees knew, and investors soon found out, WeWork's capital was built on promises that the company was more than a real estate purveyor, that in fact it was a transformational technology company.

Thirty years ago a flying saucer hovered over the little town of Mart, Texas. Martites looked up and saw it, and a few took photos of it. When a newspaper asked the mayor of Mart about it, he said, "IT couldn't have been much or it would have never come to Mart." But the Mayor may have been wrong, for Martians may well have visited Mart back in the 1950s, when the author of this book was growing up there. Childhood betrayals, incessant drought, unreasonable parents, dogmatic grammarians, and kids who just didn't fit in might have all been engineered by visiting but invisible creatures from ...

Only 24 human beings have traveled to the moon. Theirs were the most daring voyages in mankind's history, and their view of Earth from the moon changed them and the way we see our home planet. Now in their emeritus years, the 12 remaining lunar explorers for the first time reveal the true source of courage, leadership, and the quiet patriotism that it took to accomplish their missions. Their voyages to the moon led them to the most incredible discovery of all: our home planet and its precious place in the universe.