The Apollo Chronicles

"An excellent history of the space program through the eyes of its engineers and scientists." -- James Gleick, The New York Review of Books "Brown takes us leap by leap through the 1960s, tracing the parallel engineering work at Cape Canaveral (the launch site in Florida), the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas (now the Johnson Space Center), and the rocketry group in Huntsville, Alabama. Brown peppers his account with on-the-ground details of how engineers dealt with unexpected problems." -- Alexandra Witze, Nature "Brown shows the engineers meeting tough deadlines and performing technical miracles, drawing schematics around the clock, making mistakes, coping with warning lights that blinked at the worst possible time, and regrouping after the tragic death of three astronauts." -- Flora Taylor, American Scientist "A great addition to anything you may have read about the space race with so much material I've never seen before" -- Brian Clegg, Popular Science "While [Brown] appreciates the bravery of the astronauts, his book is "more concerned with the astronauts' protectors" (which is a nice way of looking at it). This book... is written in an entertaining and accessible narrative style. It concludes with a thought-provoking observation on the heritage of the Apollo engineers." -- Mark Williamson, Engineering & Technology "In The Apollo Chronicles, we meet the engineers who toiled behind the spotlights from 1958 to 1972. The son of an Apollo engineer, author Brandon R. Brown devotes his writing chops to storytelling and a dramatic tension that will engage even the most technical unsavvy and engineering estranged of readers." -- Nelson Noven, Fahrenheit "Brown shows the engineers meeting tough deadlines and performing technical miracles, drawing schematics around the clock, making mistakes, coping with warning lights that blinked at the worst possible time, and regrouping after the tragic death of three astronauts in a fire that broke out in the capsule during a simulated countdown early in 1967." American Scientist