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Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy, and the New Battleground of the Cold War
Top of the pile
85
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
83/100Critics
87/100Scholars
Author:
Jeff Shesol
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
Date:
June 1, 2021
If the United States couldn't catch up to the Soviets in space, how could it compete with them on Earth? That was the question facing John F. Kennedy at the height of the Cold War--a perilous time when the Soviet Union built the wall in Berlin, tested nuclear bombs more destructive than any in history, and beat the United States to every major milestone in space. Mercury Rising re-creates the tension and excitement of a flight that shifted the momentum of the space race and put the United States on the path to the moon.
What The Reviewers Say
Jeff Shesol’s Mercury Rising highlights this fragility in a refreshing narrative that captures the sometimes dispiriting realities of America’s debut in space.
In this dramatic account, Shesol (Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court) tells the story of the first manned American spaceflight into orbit. In the introduction, Shesol skillfully sets the scene, describing an anxious nation that watched as John Glenn prepared to launch aboard the spacecraft Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962.
Shesol chronicles the early days of the space program with a historian’s attention to detail and a novelist’s flair for interesting storytelling.
In Mercury Rising Jeff Shesol [...] provides a splendid account of Glenn's mission. Shesol sets America's space program in the context of the Cold War. Drawing on interviews and Glenn's personal notes, he includes a fascinating portrait of the astronaut who became a national icon..
