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Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
Top of the pile
97
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
99/100Critics
95/100Scholars
Author:
Adam Higginbotham
Publisher:
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Date:
May 14, 2024
On January 28, 1986, just seventy-three seconds into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven people on board. Millions of Americans witnessed the tragic deaths of a crew including New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Like the assassination of JFK, the Challenger disaster is a defining moment in 20th century historyâone that forever changed the way America thought of itself and its optimistic view of the future.
What The Reviewers Say
...a superb diagnosis of one of NASA’s darkest moments.
Higginbotham is an intrepid journalist and skillful storyteller who takes care to humanize the dozens of major and minor players involved in NASA’s many successful, and occasionally catastrophic, space missions.
Adam Higginbotham provides the most definitive account of the explosion that took the lives of the seven-person crew. He also meticulously explores the missteps and negligence that allowed the tragedy to occur.
Higginbotham has to work doubly hard to make it all comprehensible.
