After Sputnik

July 1, 2007
Adult/High School-This is a hefty and fascinating sample of the more than 14,000 rocketry and space-travel artifacts held by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The book is divided into five time periods. A several-page essay introduces each one, followed by a chronological presentation of the artifacts, ranging from a Nazi-era V-2 ballistic missile and John Glenn's space suit to a cosmonaut's tube of cabbage soup and SpaceShipOne. Each item is clearly photographed and accompanied by an insightful single-page essay describing how it contributed either to the exploration of space or to popular interest in space travel and extraterrestrial worlds. The text assumes some knowledge of the history of space travel, but no more than might easily be learned from a general encyclopedia or a chapter in a textbook. Students with an interest in space exploration or 20th-century history will browse for hours through this colorful and intriguing feast of information."Sandy Schmitz, Berkeley Public Library, CA"

Copyright 2007 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2007
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, holds objects that played a major role in the history of space exploration, and this volume is essentially a museum catalog of these artifacts in an appealing, coffee-table format. To commemorate the upcoming 50th anniversary (this October) of the launch of Sputnik, Earth's first artificial satellite, Collins, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum, has collected 225 four-color and black-and-white photographs of some 140 objects: the actual space capsules, satellites, and space suits worn by John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, and others. Also included are cultural objects and space memorabilia, such as a space-themed lunchbox and the patches astronauts wore on their spacesuits. The volume also catalogs the depiction of space travel in popular culture, e.g., Star Wars action figures and the actual spaceship prop from the motion picture Close Encounters of the Third Kind. An explanatory essay accompanies a photograph of each museum artifact. Some readers may find the text's extremely small font difficult to read, but space junkies will enjoy the visuals. Recommended for popular science and history of space exploration collections.Jeffrey Beall, Univ. of Colorado at Denver & Health Sciences Ctr.

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.