Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest - Gerard Degroot

View the Table of Contents. Read the Preface.

A selection of the History, Scientific American, and Quality Paperback Book Clubs

?The book is well written and quite engaging with its cast of colorful characters.?—Choice

?Dark Side of the Moon is an elegant contribution to the history of the sp

View the Table of Contents. Read the Preface.

A selection of the History, Scientific American, and Quality Paperback Book Clubs

?The book is well written and quite engaging with its cast of colorful characters.?
—Choice

?Dark Side of the Moon is an elegant contribution to the history of the space age.?
—The Sunday Times

?DeGroot presents a chronicle of exploration, concentrating on the utter uselessness of NASA's lunar missions, boondoggles every bit as myopic and costly as the Cold War that spawned them.?
—The Atlantic Monthly

?DeGroot writes compellingly about the convergence of political, military, and industrial forces that produced the ?magnificent madness? of the space agency NASA in the 1960s. . . . A fine writer with a real flair for storytelling has fun with NASA?s extravagance and its tendency to look for complex solutions where simple ones would do.?
—The Financial Times

?DeGroot weaves a compelling tale.?
—Chicago Sun-Times

"DeGroot crafts a winning formula: While peeling away layer after layer of the deceptions and spin that sold NASA's lunar program to the funding public, he indulges readers with a nostalgia binge of epic proportions. . . . The author provides lots of philandering-astronaut stories and similar fun stuff to go along with the overview."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Entertaining reading. Anyone interested in a corrective view to the official hagiographies of the space program will find this acid-etched history hard to put down."
—Publishers Weekly

"For fans of real-life political intrigue this is essential reading. . . . DeGroot's stories make excellent reading . . . and he correctly exposes the myths constructed by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that have likely sustained NASA in the post-Apollo years. . . . DeGroot deserves plaudits for painstakingly piecing together the stories that won both the propaganda war and the moon race."
—The New Scientist

?Degroot should be commended for shining a light on the lunar quest. Citing American competitiveness, Degroot argues that the moon landing was primarily a stunt of one-upmanship: the Russians getting into space first with Sputnik had a profound affect on Americans, as politicians and citizens alike became obsessed with beating them to the moon. Never mind the ?obscenely huge? cost of a lunar mission and consequent risk to defense, or that sending a man into space was perhaps negligible in terms of science. At the present time, when NASA has scheduled another moon shot for 2018, Degroot revisits the question that should have been fully explored the last time around: Why??
—Booklist

?DeGroot?s wonderful new book, Dark Side of the Moon, looks at all aspects of the space program and gives us a complete picture of the glorious folly that was the race to the moon. . . . A witty and elegant book about America?s desperate gamble for space supremacy. . . . No matter how cynical we might be about the motivation behind the space race, DeGroot makes us appreciate the splendor of the achievement.?
—St. Petersburg Times

?DeGroot?s strength in Dark Side of the Moon is going back and covering the space program from Sputnik through Apollo 17 without the starry-eyed vision most of us had. . . . He leaves practically nothing out, discussing the political, cultural, military and social aspects and the effects on each. It?s a complete and serious (with occasional splashes of humor and irony) re-examination of a huge project.?
—Santa Fe New Mexican

"DeGroot has done it again. After writing two of the best books on the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race he has written another intelligent, insightful and remarkably readable history of the space race. Dark Side of the Moon shines a bright light on America's sprint to the moon."
—Martin J. Sherwin, co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography)

"The U.S. victory in the 1960s space race still lies at the heart of American triumphalism. In this fresh, insightful, and irreverent history of the U.S. space program, DeGroot punctures the scientific pretensions of manned space flight more effectively than any writer since Tom Wolfe. DeGroot deftly cuts through the dense mythology crafted by NASA and the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to expose politicians' and space enthusiasts' cynical manipulation of public fears and dreams and eagerness to spend enormous sums of public money in the race to the moon. This witty and erudite work not only illuminates key aspects of Cold War politics and culture, it is also crucial for understanding current space policy and misadventures."
—Peter J. Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute, American University, and author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America

"Splendid. . . . Grounded in serious scholarship, covers issues well, has an argument that comes through loud and clear, and is at the same time eminently readable and enjoyable. Drawing on NASA files and documents at the JFK Library in Boston, the manuscript at the same time relies on elements from the popular press, and manages to integrate popular culture with larger issues of policy in a highly effective way. . . . DeGroot has a unique ability to characterize issues in a vivid and vibrant way."
—Allan M. Winkler, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

?Drawing on meticulous archival research, DeGroot cuts through myths created by the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations and sustained by NASA ever since...Exposing the truth behind one of the most revered fictions of American history, Dark Side of the Moon explains why the American space program has been caught in a state of purposeless ever since Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the surface of the moon.?
—NYU Today

For a very brief moment during the 1960s, America was moonstruck. Boys dreamt of being an astronaut; girls dreamed of marrying one. Americans drank Tang, bought "space pens" that wrote upside down, wore clothes made of space age Mylar, and took imaginary rockets to the moon from theme parks scattered around the country.

But despite the best efforts of a generation of scientists, the almost foolhardy heroics of the astronauts, and 35 billion dollars, the moon turned out to be a place of "magnificent desolation," to use Buzz Aldrin's words: a sterile rock of no purpose to anyone. In Dark Side of the Moon, Gerard J. DeGroot reveals how NASA cashed in on the Americans' thirst for heroes in an age of discontent and became obsessed with putting men in space. The moon mission was sold as a race which America could not afford to lose. Landing on the moon, it was argued, would be good for the economy, for politics, and for the soul. It could even win the Cold War. The great tragedy is that so much effort and expense was devoted to a small step that did virtually nothing for mankind.

Drawing on meticulous archival research, DeGroot cuts through the myths constructed by the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations and sustained by NASA ever since. He finds a gang of cynics, demagogues, scheming politicians, and corporations who amassed enormous power and profits by exploiting the fear of what the Russians might do in space.

Exposing the truth behind one of the most revered fictions of American history, Dark Side of the Moon explains why the American space program has been caught in a state of purposeless wandering ever since Neil Armstrong descended from Apollo 11 and stepped onto the moon. The effort devoted to the space program was indeed magnificent and its cultural impact was profound, but the purpose of the program was as desolate and dry as lunar dust.