Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age » (Bargain)

Matthew Brzezinski is a former Moscow correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and has reported extensively on homeland-security issues for The New York Times Magazine and other publications. He is the author of Casino Moscow: A Tale of Greed and Adventure on Capitalism’s Wildest Frontier and Fortress America: On the Front Lines of Homeland Security.

“In his exuberant narrative of the superpower space race . . . [Brzezinski] tells the story of American and Soviet decisions with remarkable dramatic—even cinematic—flair.”—The New York Times Book Review

In Red Moon Rising, Matthew Brzezinski recounts the dramatic behind-the-scenes story of the fierce battles on earth that preceded and followed the launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957. He takes us inside the Kremlin, the White House, secret military facilities, deep-cover safe houses, and the halls of Congress to bring to life the Russians and Americans who feared and distrusted their compatriots at least as much as their superpower rivals.

Drawing on original interviews and new documentary sources, Brzezinski tells a story rich in the paranoia of the time. The combatants include three U.S. presidents, survivors of the gulag, corporate chieftains, ambitious apparatchiks, rehabilitated Nazis, and a general who won the day by refusing to follow orders. The true story of the birth of the space age has never been told in such dramatic detail, and Red Moon Rising brings it vividly and memorably to life.

The New York Times - Mark Atwood Lawrence

There is nothing especially new in Red Moon Rising, which is heavily indebted to painstaking research by legions of historians who came before. But Brzezinski, a former Moscow correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, tells the story of American and Soviet decisions with remarkable dramatic—even cinematic—flair.

Prologue     1
The Request     17
Jet Power     45
Trials and Errors     60
Tomorrowland     78
Desert Fires     95
Pictures in Black and White     115
A Simple Satellite     142
By the Light of a Red Moon     161
Something for the Holidays     188
Operation Confidence     213
Goldstone Has the Bird     240
Epilogue     268
Notes     279
Acknowledgments     309
Index     311