Moonshot Author: Dan Parry Publisher: Ebury Press ISBN: 978-009192837-7 Price: ?11.99 (Pb), 312pp
Check prices on Amazon amazon.co.uk                  amazon.com

If you already have a good knowledge of the Apollo 11 mission, then it's probably not essential that you read Moonshot. For everyone else there is plenty to enjoy in Dan Parry's book. Despite being written to coincide with a drama made for ITV and the History Channel in the US, the book stands up on its own as a factual piece. The focus is on the
experiences of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, as well as the team of engineers and flight directors around them, as they prepared for that 'giant leap'.

The narrative begins with Armstrong and Aldrin piloting the Eagle on that perilous journey down to the lunar surface,
leaving us at a cliff-hanger (though of course we know the outcome) before going back to the beginning of the Apollo
story, with flashbacks into the lives of the astronauts highlighting how they became the men in the right place at the right time to be chosen to walk on the Moon.

Moonshot doesn't dwell on the missions that followed Apollo 11, its legacy or really on the lives of the astronauts after they had returned to Earth bar a short epilogue, so don't expect too much insight into their personal lives (although this reader
finds the actual mission as told here far more fascinating than reminiscing on the astronauts' personal lives anyway). But what all of these fortieth anniversary celebrations are reminding us is how courageous, fearless, skilled and smart these men were - they truly were the right stuff.

Keith Cooper