- Credit: Walker & Company
Starman – The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony; Walker & Company, New York; $16.00 (Paperback); May 1, 2011.
Despite the historic nature of the first voyage of a human in Earth orbit five decades ago, details about Yuri Gagarin’s milestone making flight – and the man himself — remain foggy, even controversial.
This re-issued book, timed to the 50th anniversary of the Soviet cosmonaut’s odyssey from peasant to a globe-trotting celebrity – and the repercussions of that notoriety — helps to showcase Gagarin’s life, tragically cut short by an aircraft crash.
The book is well-written, engaging, and brow-raising in many ways. Doran and Bizony attempt to lift the lid on all the Cold War, space race one-upmanship so prevalent in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s.
The secrecy within the former Soviet Union at the time doesn’t fully allow a crystal clear account of Gagarin’s literal rise into the history books. Still, thanks to the research and interviews done by the authors, this volume sheds insight into several behind-the-scenes activities associated with, not only with Gagarin’s epic trek on April 12, 1961, but follow-on piloted missions too.
Indeed, the book offers unique views into, what the author’s call “lethal failings and appalling risks” taken by Soviet space officials in those early, formative years of space exploration. But the book also spotlights the determination of Soviet rocketeers to spearhead the human quest to travel into space.
New material has been added to this 1998 release, underscoring Yuri Gagarin’s rightful place in history as Starman #1. Hopefully, this book will spark even more writing and historical fact-finding to further flesh out humankind’s first forays into outer space.
For more information, go to:
http://www.walkerbooks.com/books/catalog.php?key=889
By Leonard David