The prosaic side of space exploration--the politics of the aerospace industry--is insightfully illustrated in Bizony's biography of James Webb, who headed NASA from 1961 to 1968. Webb's imprint remains on the organization for good and ill, and Bizony's consciousness of Webb's legacy--a post-Apollo NASA unsure of its goals--enhances his retrospective on Webb's tenure. A lawyer who cut his political teeth as a New Dealer, Webb believed in large-scale government-industry coordination, and thought he was creating a model of space age management in his leadership of the crash program to land on the moon. His model collapsed with the 1967 space capsule fire that killed three Apollo astronauts; an investigation exposed deals cut by the manufacturer that snagged the contract. This pork-barrel underside to the history of Apollo is a crucial corrective to the traditional emphasis on astronauts and missions, and Bizony carries it off with investigative determination while retaining balance. Emerging from the bureaucratic thickets with an ultimately praiseworthy portrait of Webb, this should circulate with the space program set. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2006 Booklist

The story of the space race, from an angle only insiders knew until now. Space journalist Bizony (The Rivers of Mars, 1997) opens with the proposition that Webb, a politically savvy technocrat from North Carolina, deserves the primary credit for NASA's winning the race to put a man on the moon. The Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik 1 had set off waves of alarm in Washington circles, which quickly recognized space flight as a key to American power and prestige. Eisenhower, wary of excess military influence on U.S. policy, wanted a civilian agency to oversee the nascent space effort; the result was NASA. Webb, a New Deal Democrat who had served as a budget administrator under Truman, became NASA's director at the beginning of the Kennedy administration. Kennedy promised an American moon landing by the end of the '60s, and Webb took that promise and ran with it. Bizony details how Webb's personnel decisions, his awarding of contracts and his negotiations with power brokers turned NASA into one of the most prestigious government organizations. Webb believed he was creating a new form of management, and for a long while, his successes made him all but untouchable. Then a fire killed three Apollo astronauts in January 1967. NASA was under the microscope, and the subsequent investigation uncovered enough irregularities to damage Webb's career. At the same time, the escalation of Vietnam put NASA's budget under new restraints. Webb left the agency in 1968, just before its greatest triumphs. Bizony notes that no subsequent director has come close to Webb's impact or success. He ends with a scathing look at the agency's recent years. Fascinating look at how politics and science intersected in the glory years of NASA. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Journalist Bizony's excellent corrective to NASA's mythologized history takes an unflinching look at how James Webb, a North Carolina farm boy turned Washington insider, ran his end of the space race as NASA's administrator under presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Presiding over the agency during its build-up to the Apollo moon mission, Webb grew the agency into a research and development behemoth by leaning heavily on the old boy network: he called in favors, brokered backroom deals, bullied those who weren't in lockstep with his vision and commandeered vast sums of federal budget money-all the while driven, Bizony contends, by "pure-hearted ideals." Bizony shows both the spectacular successes and failures leading up to the Apollo lunar landing and discusses success's cost in terms of dollars, human life and political ambition. The book closes with a chapter detailing the crippling blows dealt to NASA by the Nixon administration, a time period that saw the beginning of the space shuttle project. Hampered by budget restrictions, NASA engineers had to design a "dangerously imperfect piece of technology" that later resulted in two famous disasters. Bizony laments the militarizing of NASA under Reagan and the "wavering" public support for expanding the space program, but this firebrand of a book should rekindle interest. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Bizony's The Man Who Ran the Moon is a well-researched, extensively documented tale backgrounding the US push to land a human on the moon. Insider statements and memories are effectively woven with public documents to bring alive the climate of distrust, fear, hope, and determination that enveloped the nation after the Soviet Sputnik satellite launch. In telling the story of how political ambition and scientific endeavors jostled and fought for the same goal, it also tells the ongoing story of NASA and its relationship with the public and politicians. The work is a tribute to the namesake of the space telescope that will replace the Hubble; it should answer the question, "Who is James E. Webb and why is NASA naming the space telescope after him?" This book will be as useful and interesting to historians and political scientists as to astronomers. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers; lower-division undergraduates through professionals. D. H. Gifford Pima Community College

Astronauts may have captured the public's attention during the space race, but it was James E. Webb, NASA administrator from 1961 to 1968, who ensured that the U.S. mission to the moon literally got off the ground and stayed on target. Yet Webb's management also contributed to the tragic fire that nearly derailed Apollo, and he needed to apply his administrative and political skills toward engineering his own replacement in order to save the program. In contrast to W. Henry Lambright's similarly priced study of Webb as the consummate bureaucrat, Powering Apollo: James E. Webb of NASA, this biography by Bizony (Invisible Worlds: Exploring the Unseen) focuses primarily on Webb's role as NASA leader and the fortunes of the organization under subsequent administrators. Either would make a good addition to academic and public library collections. Lambright's book is a more scholarly study of Webb's managerial style and provides considerably more detail on his work outside of the Apollo mission, while Bizony's title will hold more appeal for space buffs.-Nancy R. Curtis, Univ. of Maine Lib., Orono (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.