Robert Stone (7) (1958–)

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

Chasing the Moon: The People, the Politics, and the Promise That Launched America Into the Space Age by Robert Stone and Alan Andres a non-fiction book looking back at the thinkers, dreamers, and futurists that help envision American’s space program. This book is a companion book to the PBS’ American Experience.

I have not seen PBS’ American Experience and did not realize this was a companion book until well into it. At first reading Chasing the Moon: The People, the Politics, and the Promise That Launched America Into the Space Age by Robert Stone and Alan Andres seemed somewhat strange because it wasn’t set up like the usual “space program” book, but it held my attention and I kept on reading.

The book follows the lives and careers of Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer and author of a scientific paper on communications satellites. Famous scientist and rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun, as well as the commander of Apollo 8, Frank Borman, who together with his crew of James Lovell and William Anders were the first humans to leave low Earth orbit and orbit the Moon. The last two personalities the book follows are those of mathematician Poppy Northcutt, the first woman to work in Mission Control and equal rights fighter, and Edward Dwight, the first African American candidate.

The book mainly fills in the blanks in the non-technical side of the moon landing, the political environment which fostered at the time, as well as how leaders at high levels encouraged or derailed the program based on their own goals and/or selfish reasons.

The authors, like many other books, drives in the point that the flight of Apollo 11 did not happen in a vacuum. There were many people, known and unknown that contributed to this public/private enterprise.

This book is just an overview, albeit a very good one, of the American space program, and hence a great introduction to it. Even though I read several books about the subject, I always learn something new, whether a tidbit or a better understanding of a complicated (to me) subject.… (meer)

This book, a companion piece to the PBS "American Experience" film of the same name, expands on the televised program as it tells the stories of visionaries using both eyewitness accounts and newly-discovered archival material. In investigating those who inspired President Kennedy’s 1961 pronouncement of landing a man on the moon before the close of the decade, “Chasing the Moon” looks not only at the work of scientists and engineers but also at the dreams of science fiction writers and filmmakers. Exploring the stories of creative thinkers such as science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, astronaut Frank Borman, and Poppy Northcutt provides readers with a new perspective on the lunar landing. Photographs accompany the narrative; a special full-color selection of photographs is also included. Readers interested in the development of space exploration and NASA’s lunar missions will find much to appreciate here.

Highly recommended.… (meer)

Patty Hearst called herself an "urban guerrilla" — hardly the occupation her parents and billionaire grandfather, media mogul William Randolph Hearst, envisioned for her. But Hearst's story was more sensational than anything her grandpa's editors could have dreamed up. Kidnapped in 1974 by radical militants, held in captivity for months and then converted to the cause, Hearst became an emblem for a country mired in severe political turmoil. Robert Stone's vivid, stylish and painstakingly researched document examines the Hearst kidnapping from a variety of angles, documenting the militant group's success in using the mass media as a mouthpiece and the unruly feed-the-hungry programs it forced the Hearst family to create. It even includes surveillance footage of Patty wielding a gun in a bank robbery. Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst isn't just the tale of a freakish crime; it's the story of a country forced to watch dissent, radicalism and class warfare on the nightly news. Death to the fascist insect!… (meer)

Before the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962, America's relationship to nature would be best categorized as one of fear and contempt. But the nearly half-century since has witnessed an enormous ideological shift, with most citizens now grasping the need to protect our natural environment. Robert Stone's poignant, contemplative film combines gorgeous footage with compelling oral histories to trace American environmentalism from conception to coming-out party: April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day. His subjects include biologist Paul Erlich, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall and astronaut Rusty Schweickart, all of whom found ways to convey the urgency of the environmental mission. As in his previous T/F hit Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, Stone turns a single event into a deep study of evolving American consciousness. Earth Day reveals how, amidst explosive scientific progress and massive economic expansion, a society began to understand its interconnectedness with nature and asserting its power to preserve it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Days… (meer)