On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to venture into space, gaining worldwide fame in a quick 108-minute journey. Starman tells for the first time Gagarin's personal odyssey from peasant to international icon, his disintegration under the pressure of fame, and his final disillusionment with the USSR. Before President Kennedy had put an American on the moon, Gagarin himself was dead, killed at age thirty-four in a mysterious air...

Profiles some of the women, including two Russians, who have had important roles in space exploration and provides a brief history of the U.S. space program.

The award-winning author of Eye of the Storm chronicles the lesser-known rivalry between former Nazi-turned-U.S. Cold War scientist Wernher von Braun and Russian rocket designer Sergei Korolev, explaining how their controversial scientific achievements shaped human history. The race to space-- and to the moon-- was masterminded in the shadows by two engineers on opposite sides of the Cold War: Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi officer living in the...