First published in 1989 and now with a new foreword, Apollo is the dramatic story of the Apollo space program from the perspective of the men and women behind the scenes who accomplished the extraordinary feat of landing a man on the moon in less than a decade.


In 1961, when President Kennedy asked America to go to the moon, our space program was in shambles, and going to the moon was nothing more than a distant dream. Based on extensive interviews, many of them exclusive, Apollo follows the young, colorful engineers responsible for building a space program from scratch and realizing Kennedy's goal.


In additional to offering vivid, often revelatory portraits of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and the astronauts, Apollo portrays Jim Webb, the smooth North Carolinian who saw that NASA got what it needed from Washington; Max Faget, the genius engineer behind the Apollo design; and Joe Shea, the brilliant manager who then left under a cloud of controversy. We are taken onto the towering gantries at Cape Canaveral--and sit at the consoles in Houston's Mission Control as we relive the tragedy of the fire on Apollo 1, the narrow rescue of Apollo 13, and the triumphant first landing on the moon.


A fascinating story from the annals of science and a uniquely American tale about innovators overcoming monumental odds, Apollo captures in all its drama a critical era in American history.