'The All-American Boys' is a no-holds barred candid memoir by a former Marine jet jockey and physicist who became NASA's second civilian astronaut.

    Today he's a part of our nation's history as one of the surviving Mercury space pioneers. Leap of Faith not only reveals what went on behind the scenes of the early space program, but also takes aim at the next millennium of space travel with strong views on the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence--& even the distinct possibility we've already had contact. During his military career, he was one of the best of the best at Edwards Air Force Base, where the setting of world records for speed, endurance & altitude was an everyday occurrence. Even before joining the newly formed manned space program, he understood the dangerous nature of new technologies: hanging it over the edge & pushing the envelope, then hauling it back in & doing it again tomorrow. Gordo Cooper learned to fly with his father at age 8 in his hometown of Shawnee, OK, soloing by age 12. As an impressionable boy, he met overnight visitors to the household, including famous aviators like Amelia Earhart & Wiley Post, heightening his desire to take to the skies. Ride with Cooper thru his adventurous life in the cockpits of planes & spacecraft alike. He was the last American to go into space alone. He flew in Mercury & Gemini, & served as head of flight crew operations for both Apollo & Skylab, America's 1st orbiting space station. He was backup command pilot for Apollo X & directed design input changes for the shuttle program. He was buddies with Gus Grissom, who died in the Apollo I fire at Cape Canaveral, & was close to Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who was responsible for the USA beating Russia to the Moon. Thru it all, Cooper, a hero who shuns the label, speaks candidly of his defeats as well as his accomplishments. His life is a tapestry of space travel in the 20th century. From a source as credible as Cooper come these claims: He innocently took revealing pictures of the mysterious Area 51 during his Gemini mission & ended up in the White House speaking about it to the president; he & other military jet pilots have chased UFOs; & footage of UFOs taken by his film crew was confiscated by the government, all part of the military's long-time UFO cover-up.

    Instead, he became the first chief of American Astronaut Corps. It was Deke Slayton who selected the crews who flew the Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab missions. It was Deke Slayton who made Neil Armstrong the first man on the moon.Deke! is Deke Slayton's' story--told in his own words and in the voices of the men and women who worked with him and knew him best. Deke Slayton's knowledge of how the .S. manned space program worked is the missing piece of every space buff's puzzle. Now, after decades of silence, he tells his priceless stories of those years when American was engaged in the greatest voyage of exploration in human history.

    Intense, colorful, and dramatic --the man who hit a golf ball on the moon -- he was among the most private of America's public figures and, until his death in 1998, he guarded the story of his life zealously. Light This Candle, based on Neal Thompson's exclusive access to private papers and interviews with Shepard's family and closest friends -- including John Glenn, Wally Schirra, and Gordon Cooper -- offers a riveting, action-packed account of Shepard's life. Among the first men to fly off aircraft carriers, he was one of the most fearless test pilots. He endured long separations from his devoted wife and three daughters to fly dangerous missions, working his way up the ranks despite clashes with authority over his brazen flying maneuvers and penchant for risky pranks. Hugely competitive, he beat out John Glenn for the first Mercury spaceflight and then overcame a rare illness to return to space again on Apollo 14. He took every challenge head-on and seemed to win every time. Long overdue, Light This Candle is a candid and inspiring account of a bold American life.

    What neither he nor anyone else had counted on was a door that refused to open. But that is the nature of spaceflight--anything can, and sometimes does, go wrong. Ultimately, Jones spent fifty-two days orbiting Earth, including more than nineteen hours outside during extravehicular activity--that is, sky walking.

    And the first to dance on it. For Pete Conrad, it was all about the ride. Nicknamed the Comeback Kid, he survived his family's financial hardships, overcame dyslexia, landed a Navy scholarship to Princeton, and became one of the country's elite test pilots. Never the squeaky clean NASA poster boy, he famously bounced himself out of the Mercury Program but came roaring back to fly two Gemini missions, walk on the moon as Commander of Apollo 12, command the first Skylab, and work to develop the first re-usable commercial rocket-logging more time in space than all the original astronauts combined. Based on interviews conducted with Conrad by his wife before his untimely death, Rocketman is the amazing-but-true, surprisingly candid insider's view of the greatest ride in history, America's glorious race to the stars, as seen through the eyes of the real Space Cowboy: Pete Conrad, the Rocketman.

    Scott Carpenter was America's fourth man in space, his 1962 three-orbit mission in a tiny Mercury capsule closely paralleling that of John Glenn's previous mission. But that's where the similarities end: a malfunctioning navigational system caused Carpenter to splash down, dangerously, some 250 miles off-target, and Glenn's fame would somehow forever eclipse that of all seven of his fellow original astronauts combined. This memoir, penned in conjunction with Carpenter's daughter Kris, oddly distances itself from Carpenter's life through use of a third-person narrative (only the astronaut's calm account of his perilous mission is delivered directly in his voice), a device that ultimately echoes the more personal distances Carpenter endured in his own fateful, if troubled, journey toward the stars. While Carpenter may have been able to trace his lineage back to the Plymouth colony of the 1630s, his immediate family seemed shattered. His research-chemist father was successful but absent, his mother often a bedridden invalid. Carpenter's journey to the Mercury program after a Rocky Mountain childhood and a stint on lumbering Naval patrol planes is one of the more unlikely of the original astronaut class, and he offers up his own perspectives on what has become a compelling body of American folklore (thanks largely to Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff and the memoirs of other participants). While the account of NASA's infancy seems quaint, its officialdom often comes off as nothing short of cutthroat, perhaps inspiring the pioneering spaceman to the book's final adventures exploring a distinctly different frontier--the bottom of the ocean--as part of the Navy's endurance-minded SeaLab program. --Jerry McCulley

    His career spanned the entire Gemini and Apollo programs, from being the first person to spacewalk all the way around our world to the moment when he left man's last footprint on the Moon as commander of Apollo 17.Between those two historic events lay more adventures than an ordinary person could imagine as Cernan repeatedly put his life, his family and everything he held dear on the altar of an obsessive desire. Written with New York Times bestselling author Don Davis, The Last Man on the Moon is the astronaut story never before told - about the fear, love and sacrifice demanded of the few men who dared to reach beyond the heavens for the biggest prize of all - the Moon.

    He flew six space missions in three different programs—more than any other human. He served with NASA for more than four decades. His peers called him the “astronaut’s astronaut.”          Enthusiasts of space exploration have long waited for John Young to tell the story of his two Gemini flights, his two Apollo missions, the first-ever Space Shuttle flight, and the first Spacelab mission. Forever Young delivers all that and more: Young’s personal journey from engineering graduate to fighter pilot, to test pilot, to astronaut, to high NASA official, to clear-headed predictor of the fate of Planet Earth.          Young, with the assistance of internationally distinguished aerospace historian James Hansen, recounts the great episodes of his amazing flying career in fascinating detail and with wry humor. He portrays astronauts as ordinary human beings and NASA as an institution with the same ups and downs as other major bureaucracies. He frankly discusses the risks of space travel, including what went wrong with the Challenger and Columbia shuttles.          Forever Young is one of the last memoirs produced by an early American astronaut. It is the first memoir written by a chief of the NASA astronaut corps. Young’s experiences and candor make this book indispensable to everyone interested in the U.S. space program.

    The first NASA flight director, Kraft emerged from boyhood in small-town America to become a visionary who played an integral role in what would become the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It's all here, from the legendary Mercury missions that first sent Americans into space through the Gemini and Apollo missions that landed them on the moon. The great heroes of space are here, too-Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Buzz Aldrin-leading the space race that would change the course of U.S. history. From NASA's infancy to its greatest triumphs . . . from the calculated gambles to the near disasters to the pure luck that accompanied each mission, Flight relives the spellbinding events that captured the imagination of the world. It is a stirring tribute to the U.S. space program and to the men who risked their lives to take America on a flight into the unknown-from the man who was there for it all. "A highly readable memoir." (The New York Times Book Review) "A rewarding look at the brief, shining moment when space pathfinders held sway over space warriors." (The Washington Post)

    16 pages of photos.

    He spent six days orbiting the moon, including three days completely alone, the most isolated human in existence. During the return from the moon to earth he also conducted the first spacewalk in deep space, becoming the first human ever to see both the entire earth and moon simply by turning his head. The Apollo 15 flight capped an already-impressive career as an astronaut, including important work on the pioneering Apollo 9 and Apollo 12 missions, as well as the perilous flight of Apollo 13.Nine months after his return from the moon, Worden received a phone call telling him he was fired and ordering him out of his office by the end of the week. He refused to leave.What happened in those nine months, from being honored with parades and meetings with world leaders to being unceremoniously fired, has been a source of much speculation for four decades. Worden has never before told the full story around the dramatic events that shook NASA and ended his spaceflight career. Readers will learn them here for the first time, along with the exhilarating account of what it is like to journey to the moon and back. It's an unprecedentedly candid account of what it was like to be an Apollo astronaut, with all its glory but also its pitfalls.

    ClarkeSpace was one of the most fiercely fought battlegrounds of the Cold War, the Moon its ultimate beachhead.In this dual autobiography, Apollo 15 commander David Scott and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first man to ever walk in space, recount their exceptional lives and careers spent on the cutting edge of science and space exploration—and their participation in the greatest technological race ever—to land a man on the Moon.With each mission fraught with perilous tasks, and each space program touched by tragedy, these parallel tales of adventure and heroism read like a modern-day thriller. Cutting fast between their differing recollections, this book reveals, in a very personal way, the drama of one of the most ambitious contests ever embarked on by man, set against the conflict that once held the world in suspense: the clash between Communism and Western democracy.Through the men's memoirs, their courage, passion for exploration, and determination to push themselves to the limit, emerge not only through their triumphs but also through their perseverance in times of extraordinary difficulty and danger."Two Sides of the Moon is unique among space histories. If you are looking for a balanced, interesting, and personal account of the American and Soviet space programs during the 1960s and 1970s this is it."---Astronomy magazine

    This autobiography tells the story of how he came not only to achieve that goal, but to become the most-launched astronaut in history, as well as a NASA veteran whose career spanned the entire US Space Shuttle program. From his childhood in rural Indiana, through education at Purdue University, and a career in the US Air Force, Ross charted a path to NASA after overcoming many setbacks—from failing to qualify for Air Force pilot training because of “bad” eyesight, to an initial failure to be selected into the astronaut program. The majority of the book is an insider’s account of the US Space Shuttle program, including the unforgettable experience of launch, the delights of weightless living, and the challenges of constructing the International Space Station. Ross is a uniquely qualified narrator.During seven spaceflights, he spent 1,393 hours in space, including 58 hours and 18 minutes on nine space walks. Life on the ground is also described, including the devastating experiences of the Challenger and Columbia disasters.For readers who have followed the space program from Mercury through the International Space Station and wonder what comes next, this book provides fascination; for young people interested in space exploration and reaching for their dreams, whatever they might be, this book provides inspiration. Full of stories of spaceflight that few humans have ever experienced, told with humor and honesty, Spacewalker presents a unique perspective on the hard work, determination, and faith necessary to travel beyond this world. Key Points:·       An insider’s account of the US Space Shuttle program, from before its first launch through the final landing, and the building of the International           Space Station.·       A firsthand account of life in space from the first human to fly seven missions.      ·       An inspirational story of a personal journey from rural Indiana to outer space, powered by a deep Christian faith.

    Shepard and Slayton, part of the pioneering space program from the beginning, tell this fascinating inside story. 32 pages of photos.