Carrying The Fire by Michael Collins is an excellent account of Apollo 11 from the perspective of the command module pilot. I've read it three times, it's a wonderful book, he's a very intelligent, capable and humble man.
This book completely changed my understanding of how that era of space projects was developed. Before reading it I didn't know how involved the early astronauts were in actually developing the systems, spacecraft, and procedures.
As test pilots they were extremely competent technicians obviously, but they were expected to develop in novel individual domains to solve previously unexplored problems. By the end of gemini the first two dozen astronauts were each among a handful of world experts in their focus: things like orbital rendezvous mechanics, navigation, interface design, biomechanics of flight, radio telemetry. The program wasn't built for them to fly, to a huge extent they guided how it was built.
As test pilots they were extremely competent technicians obviously, but they were expected to develop in novel individual domains to solve previously unexplored problems. By the end of gemini the first two dozen astronauts were each among a handful of world experts in their focus: things like orbital rendezvous mechanics, navigation, interface design, biomechanics of flight, radio telemetry. The program wasn't built for them to fly, to a huge extent they guided how it was built.