Edit: READ THE WHOLE POST, I’M ONLY LOOKING FOR “NON FICTION THAT READS LIKE A NOVEL” IF IT PERTAINS TO EARLY SPACE PROGRAMS
Just started rewatching “For all Mankind” and remembered how much I enjoyed it, and enjoy this era of history as well.
Also I’ve always been a big space nerd and have read a ton of sci-fi, but never anything more grounded in reality.
What’s good, what’s out there!
by Wanderson90
11 Comments
Raid on the Sun is about Israel’s airstrike deep into Iraq against Saddam’s nuclear facility. Parallel subplot is the Mossad operating in Europe to kill scientists and blow up factories to give the Air Force more time to conduct the raid. Reads like a Clancy novel
I just picked up *The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts* by Loren Grush. I haven’t gotten into it yet but it looks good.
Edit to add: And for the sake of bot testing… {{The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts by Loren Grush}} (this might be too new though)
Have you ever read The Right Stuff? Has all the details and facts, but the writing is so engaging and hilarious at times that it reads like a novel.
Carrying the Fire, by Michael Collins. It’s one of my all time favorite books, got me really into space age history and eventually into a NASA internship. Collins is not over the top, very humble and wouldn’t have admitted it but he was a wonderful writer and also a wonderful person. Plenty of cool historical details and insight into the mercury/gemini/Apollo astronauts, it really does read like a novel in terms of pacing and interest. But I was also really moved by his perspectives and slightly more philosophical/poetic commentary on how going to space changes the way you see the world— and also some things that stay the same.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was based on actual events. Was on the NYT Bestseller list for 216 weeks, a record that still stands (which, considering all of the Harry Potter novels that came later, is impressive)
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes reads like a spy novel a lot of the time. Just fantastic and fascinating.
The devil in the white city by Erik Larson. About the serial killer HH Holmes
The book credited with starting “non-fiction novels” is In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The closest thing I can think of is *Hidden Figures*
A Man on the Moon by Chaikin is the book to read about Apollo.
Slightly off request, but excellent is The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal, an alternate history where the earth is struck by a meteor in the 50s, and the world cooperates on a space program much sooner and with greater intensity. The author did a ton of research, and it shows. She has a great bibliography at the end, which I’ll include here as these books might more closely match what you’re asking for. These are not my recommendations, so I can’t speak to the quality, but it’s a place to start.
Chaikin, Andrew. A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. New York: Penguin Books, 2007.
Collins, Michael. Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.
Hadfield, Chris. An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything. New York: Back Bay Books, 2015.
Hardesty, Von. Black Wings: Courageous Stories of African Americans in Aviation and Space History. New York: Smithsonian, 2008.
Holt, Nathalia. Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars. New York: Back Bay Books, 2017.
Nolen, Stephanie. Promised the Moon: The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race. New York: Basic Books, 2004.
Roach, Mary. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.
Scott, David Meerman and Jurek, Richard. Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2014.
Shetterly, Margot Lee. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2016.
Sobel, Dava. The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. New York: Penguin Books, 2017.
Teitel, Amy Shira. Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA. New York: Bloomsbury Sigma, 2016.
von Braun, Dr. Wernher. Project MARS: A Technical Tale. Burlington, Ontario: Collector’s Guide Publishing, Inc., 2006.