Each retelling of this story—humanity's greatest adventure to date—peels back another layer, and 'Rocket Men' is no exception; I couldn't put it down!

If you enjoy the space program, you will love this book!

I'd give it a 3.5 if I could. This book is a very interesting and insightful view into the internal workings NASA throughout most of the 60's.

A comprehensive review of the Apollo 11 mission, but somehow falls flat. The book seems to go on a tangent on rocket development and skips around quite a bit, often leaving the reader behind. Still, it was interesting to read about how concern that whoever controlled space would control the world fueled one of the most inspirational feats of mankind. Best parts include meaningful quotes from the astronauts.

I'm like a little kid when it comes to absolute delight over outer space and dinosaurs so this is probably biased but hey, I enjoyed the heck out of this.

Great review of not just the Apollo 11 mission but the Space Race and even the Cold War in general. Does a tremendous job of linking together specific moments and memories from Apollo 11 and the events that led to that momentous day to the origins of the Cold War. Most of all, it answers the important questions about why landing on the moon was so important to the United States and why we've suffered as a nation since then by never expanding upon the successes of the Apollo program.

Overall this is not a bad telling of the Apollo 11 trip to the Moon. It certainly isn't as detailed and belabored as "First Man", but neither is it as personal or detailed as the autobiographies of Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. I suppose that I have two complaints about this book. The first, and less egregious problem, is that I am not totally sure what this book adds to the narrative that has already been told. So if you are familiar with the Apollo program, or 11 specifically, and have read other accounts there isn't anything new here, just friendly reminders. The deeper offense is the organization of the book and Craig Nelson's tendency to chase rabbit trails. For example, Craig Nelson got to the Moon landing and the 1202 and 1201 errors that came up and then followed a tangent about training and programming and error codes- this was frustrating and took all of the steam out of the suspense that was building up. Other authors have described this background and still maintained the suspense, but over and over this book felt disjointed as the story kept diverging. Lastly, the book takes a while to end while getting into some of the history of NASA since Apollo. In this part he is very pessimistic. I've noticed this before and it seems to be a common theme of the mid to late 2000s and I am not sure what drove it- whether it was the impending end of the Shuttle program with no replacement plan in sight, or the pessimism of the '08 financial crisis, or just NASA in an era where innovation seemed lost and private companies not making great strides. Since the early 2010s though, I have seen some renewed optimism about space- from th success of private space companies, to NASA's success with Curiosity, New Horizons, Scott Kelly's year in space, InSight, and other accomplishments. There does still seem to be a lack of focus or clear goals at NASA, and I'd be lying if I said that I don't have any concerns, but I don't hold this pessimism against Nelson. He seems to fall trap to a common sentiment of the early 2000s and does what he can to encourage us to be ready despite that. It isn't the best call to arms, just as this book isn't the best or my favorite about Apollo history. Still if you're unfamiliar with Apollo history this is not a bad start if you want an easy read that is detailed enough to learn more.

Enjoyable and informative book about the first moon walk, the astronauts, and how the walk came together.