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title = "Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon - Alan Shepard"
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date = 2018-12-28
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["en-us", "alan shepard", "book", "reviews", "nasa", "apollo"]
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[GoodReads summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37711959-moon-shot):
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The never-before-told story of the courage, dedication, and teamwork that made
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the journey to the moon possible--an intense human drama of the sacrifices and
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risks asked of a remarkable group of astronauts. Shepard and Slayton, part of
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the pioneering space program from the beginning, tell this fascinating inside
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story. 32 pages of photos.
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<!-- more -->
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{{ stars(stars=0) }}
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I'm giving this book no stars because it deserves none.
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First of all, the writing style is terrible. At the very start, the way the
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author writes makes you wonder if this is really a book about history or if it
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is plain fiction. There are ways to write about historic events -- and I don't
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mean you can't go a little overboard while writing about it -- but the way the
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story is told is more akin to fiction than actual reporting of events.
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Second, this is as "MURRICA!" as a book can get. All American events are
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described as passionate as possible, while Russian events -- you know, the guys
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who put a man in space before the US and who did a spacewalk before the US --
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as described as plain as possible. This gets to the point that, at the first
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half of the book, events are timed after American successes and Russian
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failures; it gets to the incredible insensitive point when talking about Apollo
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15 and the moonbuggy and how it was easier to carry stuff on the moon compared
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to the Apollo 14 mission (which is probably the longest part of the book, even
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supplanting the Apollo 11, the first mission to reach the moon) and, oh, 3
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Russians died a bit before -- mentioned as a simple "matter of fact" than an
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actual accident and something that shouldn't happen.
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I'm not saying "Yeah, Russians are part of the Apollo mission" 'cause that
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would be stupid, but JFK said the space missions were a mission to humanity and
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even Neil Armstrong said reaching the moon was a giant leap for mankind, but
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this book takes "humanity" and throws out of the window. 'Cause the important
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stuff is that American win and Russians lose and fuck Russians, amirite? (That
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was sarcastic, in case you didn't noticed.)
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And the last chapter is purely political instead of focusing on history.
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If the whole book was Alan Shepard telling his side of the history -- and
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focusing on *that* instead of going all the way to the points where
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Shepard had no interaction with -- then yeah, it could be a reasonably good
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book. But the way it is told, it's Alan Shepard story hidden in a bunch of
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other stuff.
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