Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974
It was published by the NASA History Division in 2000.
What's it about?
It's basically a narrative history of Soviet efforts to explore space. It was the first major work on the history of the Soviet space program based on the enormous amount of Russian-language information available after the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, it contains tons of stuff that was never previously published in the West. It's got a lot of technical stuff, but it's not an encyclopedia or anything. It's written like a story, so you can read it from beginning to end. It's got a plot. And it's not a short book. The main text is something like 800 pages long. Plus, there's tables and appendices that add up to about 1,000 pages.
It got a lot of awards and things like that.
• The Wall Street Journal recently declared the book one of the "five best" books on space exploration [December 30, 2006]
• The Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award from the American Astronautical Society (AAS) [2001]
• Aviation Week and Space Technology year-end laurels [2001]
• History Manuscript Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) [1998]
In the unlikely case that you might want to obtain a copy, you can get it from the following places (for about $80)
NASA Headquarters Information Center
U.S. Government Superintendent of Documents
NASA History Division
Yeah, I know it's ridiculously expensive. I had nothing to do with that.
The hardcover book was republished in a two-volume paperback version.
The text is exactly the same but the two volumes have different titles. They are:
They are both published by the University Press of Florida
They are available from their website: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
Finally, here are some reviews of the book: (these are all pdf files)
• Isis 96 no. 2 (2005): 308-309.
• The Russian Review 63 (2004): 544-545.
• Russian History/Histoire Russian 31 no. 3 (Fall 2004): 361-362.
• Space Policy 18 (2002): 75-76.
• Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 55 nos. 7-8 (2002): 240.
• The Public Historian 24 (Winter 2002): 108-109.
• Technology & Culture 42 no. 4 (2001): 817-818.
• Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly 9 no. 1 (September 2001): 62.
• Journal of Military History 65 no. 3 (2001): 859-860.
• Air Power History 48 no. 1 (Spring 2001): 69-70.
• Spaceflight (2001): 175.
• Astronomy 29 no. 3 (March 2001): 96-97.
• Aviation Week and Space Technology, January 8, 2001.
• Air & Space 15 no. 5 (December 2000/January 2001): 92.