Prices: Man on the Moon Books

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  Wernher von Braun: The Man Who Sold the Moon

  Perhaps no one in history has played the role of scientist as celebrity with as much skill—and as much deception—as Wernher von Braun. America's leading rocket expert and most enthusiastic advocate of space travel, he had a closet full of secrets that would have shocked his colleagues and millions of admirers if they had been told during his lifetime. Wernher von Braun:The Man Who Sold the Moon is the first critical biography of the young German aristocrat who created Hitler's most advanced terror weapon, the V-2 rocket, and who came to the U.S. under the Army's Project Paperclip to develop missiles as a central weapon of the Cold War. The book reveals that factions of the U.S. Army, in their zeal to have von Braun's team of scientists working for American interests, covered up what they knew about his complicity in Nazi causes and abetted him in the perpetuation of the myth he carefully created about his past.Declassified Army documents and war crime transcripts, as well as the discovery of Europe of Dora concentration camp survivors' accounts, and von Braun's published writings and personal papers, have enabled biographer Dennis Piszkiewicz to document von Braun's career more fully than any previous historian. The man who tirelessly promoted space travel, worked with NASA to collaborate with Walt Disney creating television programs and the Tomorrowland section of Disneyland, and put the first astronauts on the moon, was actually a member of the Nazi party, held a rank in the SS equivalent to that of Major, and was an accomplice in the use of slave labor from the Dora concentration camp to produce his V-2 rocket. When the Third Reich collapsed, von Braun unashamedly switched his allegiance to the victor, and adroitly distanced himself from his Nazi partners. By going on to promote NASA and sell the American people on his dreams of space exploration, he became the man who sold the moon—a man who began his brilliant career by selling his soul to the Nazis.

  $111.27

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  The Moon and Sixpence

  I confess that when first I made acquaintance with Charles Strickland I never for a moment discerned that there was in him anything out of the ordinary. Yet now few will be found to deny his greatness. I do not speak of that greatness which is achieved by the fortunate politician or the successful soldier; that is a quality which belongs to the place he occupies rather than to the man; and a change of circum-stances reduces it to very discreet proportions. The Prime Minister out of office is seen, too often, to have been but a pompous rhetorician, and the General without an army is but the tame hero of a market town. The greatness of Charles Strickland was authentic. It may be that you do not like his art, but at all events you can hardly refuse it the tribute of your interest. He disturbs and arrests. The time has passed when he was an object of ridicule, and it is no longer a mark of eccentricity to defend or of perversity to extol him. His faults are accepted as the necessary complement to his merits. It is still possible to discuss his place in art, and the adulation of his admirers is perhaps no less capricious than the disparagement of his detractors; but one thing can never be doubtful, and that is that he had genius. To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults. I suppose Velasquez was a better painter than El Greco, but custom stales one's admiration for him:

  $28.85

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  Live From the Moon: Film, Television and the Space Race

  Man’s exploration of space and its climax in the American moon landings have provided the world with iconic sounds and images of the late twentieth century. Travelling across millions of miles, these sounds and images have become lodged in the public conscious as the most powerful of collective memories. They speak both of breathtaking technological achievement and of the courage of the men, and woman, who risked their lives in striving to be more than human and to be more than just of this Earth. As John F. Kennedy said, "We choose to go to the Moon, not because it is easy but because it is hard."This is the first comprehensive exploration of the role played by film and television systems in enabling these feats of interplanetary exploration to be witnessed by audiences of hundreds of millions of people. Using material from the NASA archives, expert and enthusiast Michael Allen traces the parallel development and interdependency of space and media technologies during the Space Race -- of satellite surveillance and interplanetary probes, early Russian successes and the American missions that landed men on the moon. He also chronicles the part played by film and television in recording what was, and is, man’s greatest leap: the exploration of outer space and other planets.

  $72.32