Mr. Fishman is a veteran space reporter with a vibrant touch—nearly every sentence has a fact, an insight, a colorful quote or part of a piquant anecdote. What’s more, he has pondered the meaning of the moon landing and arrived at a surprising and persuasive answer ... Mr. Fishman is a connoisseur of fascinating detail, as well.
In his meticulously researched and absorbingly written book, journalist Charles Fishman provides both a celebration of the Apollo 11 mission and a corrective to some of the myths that have crystallized around it ... To the criticism that the Apollo program was a 'moondoggle' (in the words of sociologist Amitai Etzioni) and a waste of billions of dollars that could have been better spent addressing social ills at home, Fishman offers a persuasive defense ... As tempting as it would be to recommend One Giant Leap as a welcome diversion from our current political chaos, that meditation invites the question of what has become of that spirit in the self-dealing era of President Trump...But Fishman rescues what could have come across as an outdated paean to American exceptionalism with a crucial caveat.
While Fishman is interested in the origins of the space race and the mechanics of problem solving that got us there, he's just as concerned with the ways Apollo transformed us ... spends considerable and well-used time demonstrating NASA's role in birthing digital technologies that are now ubiquitous.
... most of his book is a long argument that the mission was worth it, for reasons many readers will wonder at ... His argument goes like this: Apollo didn’t bring us to Mars, at least not yet, but, hey, it brought you Alexa. A counterargument goes something like this: My country went to the moon and all I got was this lousy surveillance state.
Like so many authors, Fishman covers the technological challenges facing NASA. He goes into exquisite detail on such seemingly trivial matters as the ladder that Armstrong and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin used to climb down to the lunar surface. Indeed, Fishman gives readers an entire chapter on the American flag that the two planted in the lunar soil ... But Fishman also covers the bureaucratic sniping, the turf-war tussling and the Cold War contests involving the White House, Congress, NASA — and the Soviet Union, which began the space race in the late ‘50s with Sputnik ... Fishman’s snappiest salute may go the technological marvels that the space mission rushed along — and that today reside in our pockets and purses inside our cellphones ... In a larger sense, Fishman finds a philosophical payoff ... Fishman’s journalistic background taught him to write short, simple sentences, using plain-and-simple Anglo-Saxon English. As a result, despite all the detail, One Great Leap goes down smoothly ... And credit Fishman with an eye for colorful detail.
Fishman eschews a chronological approach to the Apollo moon missions in favor of a focus on technical problems, momentous or trivial, spotlighting the engineers or technicians who tackled them ... Addressing the scale and expense of Apollo, Fishman concludes with an emphatic affirmation of its worth in a work that will reward readers with new angles on a familiar story.
Fishman is a really, really good storyteller, and One Giant Leap would make a fantastic audio book ... Fishman picks and chooses among the pieces of spacecraft that were part of Apollo’s success, though the focus is, for the most part, on the parts having major technological and political impact, the Lunar Module (LM), the Apollo Guidance computer (AGC), the Lunar rover, but also the politics that went into planting an American flag on the moon ... even at 480 pages, One Giant Leap could and should have been even longer, with more on the Mercury and Gemini missions preceding Apollo, more on the Saturn V, more on each Apollo astronaut, and more on their discoveries.
... the veteran space journalist ably explains the challenges facing NASA engineers as they sought to overtake their accomplished Soviet counterparts ... Fishman’s is the most comprehensive of the three titles, and that’s not always a good thing. His crucial first chapter is weighed down by extraneous details about space-themed TV series. And though he makes a solid case that Apollo 'launched America into the Digital Age,' his closing argument is repetitive and gratingly triumphalist.
... if you’re not very techy, parts of it may boggle your mind ... Really, though, there’s no other way that author Charles Fishman could have told this tale. Without a thorough accounting of the technology involved in winning the space race, the story is quite incomplete and it’s difficult to see the full picture of the work it took and the knowledge gained in the years between averral and Apollo. It helps that Fishman also puts this event into perspective by explaining what the world didn’t have and how strides in understanding and invention changed everything, as a whole ... But again, the tech: if it’s not your thing, work through it anyhow, for a story you need to know, as an American citizen. If you’re a STEM kind of person, though, you’ll find One Giant Leap to be five stars.
Fishman skillfully tells the remarkable story ... Fishman provides fascinating details about the mission, including how the moon smells and how the American flag was made to appear as though it were flying despite the moon lacking an atmosphere ... With the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, this compelling read is highly recommended for all public libraries.
... engrossing ... a loose-jointed, episodic account of the Apollo program ... The project initially seemed impossible with existing technology but succeeded through largely unsung breakthroughs that Fishman describes with inquisitive relish ... Fishman’s knack for explaining science and engineering and his infectious enthusiasm for Apollo’s can-do wizardry make for a fascinating portrait of a technological heroic age.
Rather than focus on the astronauts, journalist Fishman offers lively profiles of many tireless, imaginative, and innovative scientists, engineers, and technicians who contributed to the Apollo mission ... A fresh, enthusiastic history of the moon mission to be read alongside Douglas Brinkley’s American Moonshot and other recent books commemorating the 50th anniversary.
