| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest. By Gerard J. DeGroot. (New York: New York University Press, 2006. xiv, 321 pp. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8147-1995-4.)

On one level, this book provides a useful and effective chronological overview of the space race, from early twentieth-century rocket science and the Nazis' development of the V-2 rocket through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs and the final lunar mission in 1972. But rather than simply rehearse the triumphalist narrative of Americans marshalling the "right stuff," Gerard J. DeGroot draws attention to the cynicism, chicanery, and the folly behind the race to the moon. While acknowledging that the United States' race against the Soviet Union to land the first man on our moon was a "supreme technological achievement," DeGroot argues throughout that it was, at its root, a great swindle and a huge ego trip (p. xiii).

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