I finally completed this book, and found it to be outstanding. I think it threw some people off because the nature of the title would cause people to think it was a blow by blow account of all the Apollo missions, or having strong concentration of the astronaut experience.
I've read many biographies of the astronauts, and always enjoy reading that side of things. "Flight: My Life in Mission Control" by Chris Kraft, or "Failure is Not an Option" by Gene Kranz are wonderful books at the inner working of mission control. Spoiler alert: Kraft did not hold Scott Carpenter in high regard (ha ha).
But this book really was looking at the engineering aspects of the space program. I really enjoyed reading on how the teams came together in the early days at Langley and how quickly things progressed leading up to the move to Houston. I loved reading on how they overcame many of the engineering challenges.
All in all, this is a must read for anyone who enjoys reading about the golden age of NASA and the early days of the manned space program. Originally written in 1989, there's a new 50 year anniversary version out.
It was a big a little depressing reading the original epilogue where it's talking about many of the key figures still at work at NASA, or in many cases "now retired in...", but knowing that since, most have passed. Such is the nature of life, but still, especially with the fairly loss of Chris Kraft and earlier this year, Glenn Lunney.
