One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong's Stellar American Journey

Some astronauts are born interesting; others have interestingness thrust upon them. Neil Armstrong is one of the latter, to judge by this engaging, if reverent, biography. Journalist Wagener covers the life of the first man on the moon from his all-American boyhood dreaming of space flight, through his service as a Korean war fighter pilot and his grueling NASA training regimen, to his reluctant post-moonshot celebrity and later career as an engineering professor and aerospace dignitary on boards of directors and government commissions. Armstrong is disciplined and""taciturn,"" sometimes""silent as a sphinx""; other astronauts considered him a recluse, and he seems not to have cooperated with the author, who relies on friends and colleagues for reminiscences. Still, flying to the moon is a pretty wild thing to do. Wagener provides a lucid and gripping narrative of Armstrong's space exploits, culminating in a nerve-wracking search for a safe place to land on the craggy, treacherous lunar surface with seconds of fuel left to spare. Almost as harrowing is the post-splashdown aftermath--a long stint in quarantine, strained encounters with President Nixon and the ticker-tape hoopla and media feeding frenzy of the astronauts' world tour. While readers may not agree that the moonshots were the highest pinnacle of the human spirit, Wagener will convince them that they were""pageant on the grandest of scales."" Photos.