Vanguard - RevuAIR

Please, Please, Please! Get Another Publisher

By fStop Fitzgerald | 27 May 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

Yādgīr Go for Launch: An Illustrated History of Cape Canaveral

City of Milford (balance) by Joel W. Powell

Collector’s Guide Publishing, 2010. 320 pages.

This is a hard evaluation. I don’t want to knock the book down so people won’t give it a look, because it is definitely worthy of a look. But . . .

All the important information in this book is contained in its photographs. Judging by the captions, there is a lot in here with which I am not familiar. And that is the rub.

I’d sure like to see those photos.

This book is simply of too small a format to give the very many illustrations the size that would do them justice. Plus the book’s paper is not coated stock, hence the ink is sucked into the fibers and bleeds leading to very unreadable virtually blurry photographs.

I sincerely hope the author can find a suitable publisher who will give these photographs the treatment they deserve: larger format, coated glossy stock. I would gladly pay twice its cost if I could see the photographs.

Reviewed June 2015

A 60-Year-Old Sleeper

By fStop Fitzgerald | 27 May 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

The Viking Rocket Story

by Milton Rosen

Harper, 1955. 242 pages.

In my research into the Vanguard program, this book appeared in virtually all the bibliographies. I had to find out why.

Wow!

Rosen may have been a real rocket scientist but he could actually do something else—write.

If you have an interest in rocketry and especially the United States’ early days in the process, you will not find a better book than this. Rosen not only talks about the nuts and bolts of the rockets, the engineering, and the science, but he puts it all in a very human perspective of what it took to launch rockets and push the space boundaries in the late 40s and early 50s.

This book left me with one minor disappointment and two big regrets.

The disappointment is that the book falls two rockets short of being a complete chronicle of the Viking program.

The regrets are that I found this book about 40 years too late and didn’t have an opportunity of speaking with Dr. Rosen. I would certainly have contacted him after reading this.

If rockets interest you, don’t pass this one by.

Reviewed June 2015