Book Review: 'American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race'

Book cover photo by NASA.  © 2019 HarperCollins

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”  - John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961


It's hard to believe that fifty years have passed since three manned missions (Apollo 10, 11, and 12) made the still-amazing voyage from the Earth to the Moon and fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's 1961 pledge that American astronauts would go to our closest celestial neighbor and return safely to the big, blue marble we call home before 1970. Of the three Apollos that flew between May and November of 1969, only two (11 and 12) landed on the Moon; Apollo 10 was a dress rehearsal that involved everything in a lunar mission except the landing itself.

To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing (July 20, 1969), many publishers have published new books about various aspects of Project Apollo, including the technology that helped the astronauts fly to the Moon, the Cold War politics that were intertwined with Kennedy's daring commitment to carry out the lunar missions, and - of course, the Apollo 11 mission itself.

In American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great American Space Race, historian and author Douglas Brinkley (The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast) explores the circumstances and politics that pushed the 35th President of the United States to go from a politician who was, at best, a "space skeptic" to become the driving force behind the risky and expensive national project to land astronauts on the Moon – before 1970, and surely before the Soviet Union could put its cosmonauts there first.

Published by HarperCollins on April 2, American Moonshot takes readers on a literary voyage that begins in 1917 with the birth of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Brookline, Mass. and culminates on July 20, 1969, the date on which astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin landed on the Sea of Tranquility, nearly six years after Kennedy's tragic death.

As the fiftieth anniversary of the first lunar landing approaches, the award-winning historian and perennial New York Times bestselling author takes a fresh look at the space program, President John F. Kennedy’s inspiring challenge, and America’s race to the moon.

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.”—President John F. Kennedy

On May 25, 1961, JFK made an astonishing announcement: his goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In this engrossing, fast-paced epic, Douglas Brinkley returns to the 1960s to recreate one of the most exciting and ambitious achievements in the history of humankind. American Moonshot brings together the extraordinary political, cultural, and scientific factors that fueled the birth and development of NASA and the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects, which shot the United States to victory in the space race against the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

Drawing on new primary source material and major interviews with many of the surviving figures who were key to America’s success, Brinkley brings this fascinating history to life as never before. American Moonshot is a portrait of the brilliant men and women who made this giant leap possible, the technology that enabled us to propel men beyond earth’s orbit to the moon and return them safely, and the geopolitical tensions that spurred Kennedy to commit himself fully to this audacious dream. Brinkley’s ensemble cast of New Frontier characters includes rocketeer Wernher von Braun, astronaut John Glenn and space booster Lyndon Johnson.

A vivid and enthralling chronicle of one of the most thrilling, hopeful, and turbulent eras in the nation’s history, American Moonshot is an homage to scientific ingenuity, human curiosity, and the boundless American spirit.- Publisher's dust-jacket blurb

Brinkley, a professor of history at Houston's Rice University (where President Kennedy gave his famous "We choose to go to the moon" speech on September 12, 1962), tells a thrilling and inspiring narrative that follows the genesis of mankind's greatest adventure. He populates American Moonshot with a cast of characters that includes Kennedy, his ambitious father Joseph P. Kennedy and the rest of the Kennedy clan, as well as German rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, whose boyhood dreams of interplanetary travel lead him to study under Hermann Oberth, Germany's equivalent to America's Robert Goddard. Von Braun's zeal for developing rockets that can reach space and beyond is boundless, but his innovative mind is also put into service for Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and its nascent guided missile program.

Brinkley tracks the paths of his protagonists as they converge and diverge during the Second World War and its aftermath. In American Moonshot, readers will see how the various elements that led to the creation of Project Apollo - conceived in 1960 in the final year of the Eisenhower Administration and championed by a young President at a time when Cold War fiascos were already tainting his term - during the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States of America.

As the subtitle of American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race clearly implies, Brinkley doesn't delve deeply into the entire history of Apollo from its conception to NASA's final Moon landing in December of 1972. The focus of this 576-page volume is on the Kennedy Administration's efforts to get Congressional and public support for the huge budget increases that were necessary to meet JFK's "before this decade is out" deadline for a successful American moonshot, as well as the incredible success that the space agency had in developing the hardware and procedures that were needed to leapfrog America's space program ahead of the Russians, who had already embarrassed both Dwight D. Eisenhower and the new President by achieving several space "firsts" before the Americans.

The book also shows some of the dark sides of the people involved in the manned space program. Von Braun, of course, is credited for helping the U.S. win the Space Race by developing the mighty Saturn V rocket that was the workhorse launch vehicle of the Project Apollo. But even so, Brinkley points out that before he and his team of rocket scientists handed themselves to the Americans at the end of World War II rather than be taken into Soviet captivity, von Braun also created the V-2 rockets that killed thousands of civilians in Great Britain and Belgium in late 1944 and early 1945.

Another revelation in American Moonshot is that once President Eisenhower was out of office in January 1961, his attitude toward NASA and Project Apollo soured, ostensibly because he thought it was too pricey. It is more likely that Ike was displeased that JFK had defeated Richard Nixon, who had been Eisenhower's Vice President during his two terms in a close and heavily contested race in November 1960. Throughout American Moonshot, the same President who had authorized Project Apollo in 1960 (albeit without a clear directive to go to the Moon) now called it a boondoggle and a waste of resources that could be better used by the military.

Brinkley knows his topic well, and it shows. American Moonshot is written in an informative yet lively style, and even though it covers a period that spans 46 years in its main narrative and slightly beyond to Apollo 11's landing, it is fast-paced, exciting, and even suspenseful.

I strongly recommend American Moonshot to anyone who enjoys reading books about U.S. history, political intrigue, and Presidential biographies.