Von Braun's Rockets
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 1/24/2005
The next book up for Pulitzer Prize–winning author Diane McWhorter (Carry Me Home), set in her home state of Alabama, details a little-known American slice of offbeat American history: how a team of crack German (and former Nazi) rocket scientists, under the leadership of Wernher von Braun, built in Huntsville, in the era of Jim Crow in the '50s and early '60s, the rockets that eventually took America to the moon and helped to win the Cold War. The book is Rocket City USA, and was bought for Houghton Mifflin by editor Webster Younce, who got North American rights from agent Charlotte Sheedy. McWhorter, whose book on the civil rights struggles in Birmingham won her the 2002 Pulitzer, is a widely published journalist with credits as wide-ranging as People, the Nationand Slate.
