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Never heard of it before. Who exactly calls it "one of the best" besides you? Here is a review from the National Space Society: "As the title suggests, the book is extremely negative in tone and hostile to the entire Soviet space effort, from top to bottom. The book portrays the Soviets as bumblers and fools, veering from catastrophe to disaster. Soviet space successes (including the first manned spaceflight, the first flight of a female Cosmonaut, and other missions) are treated as lucky breaks or close calls, and nothing more. While some may find this fun or amusing, it has little basis in reality. The Soviet space program was a monumental undertaking that, like the U.S. space program, demanded the service of the nation’s top engineers, manufacturers, pilots, etc. Many books, including Colin Burgess’s outstanding Soviets in Space, James Harford’s Korolev, William Burrough’s This New Ocean, and other works all portray the Soviet effort in a much more realistic manner and demonstrate what a massive and serious effort it was. Even Bryan Burrough’s Dragonfly, which is highly critical of the Russians and details more than a few life-threatening misadventures aboard the Mir Space Station, does not portray the Russians as clods the way that Strausbaugh does. ... The problem is that one could just as easily write a similar book, with a similar tone, about the U.S. space program. The loss of the Mercury capsule during Gus Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7 flight, the Apollo 1 fire that claimed the lives of three U.S. astronauts, Gene Cernan and Dick Gordon’s deeply troubled spacewalks on Gemini 9A and Gemini 11, respectively, as well as the Challenger and Columbia disasters could be described in the same manner and it would be just as unfair and disingenuous." [0] https://nss.org/book-review-the-wrong-stuff/ |