The Hazards you Embrace

Books: The majority of my knowledge comes from various books I've read. These are some of my favorites/the ones that have the most information. Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins Generally considered to be the best book written by an astronaut. He's an amazing author, and he tells the story of Gemini/Apollo beautifully. He's also great at explaining the more complex/technical stuff in understandable ways. Overall it's absolutely a must-read space book. Rocket Men by Robert Kurson My favorite book about Apollo 8. It has a really good mix of information about the mission/the crew/the families. It also does a great job at explaining all the various reasons Apollo 8 is my favorite mission. It also focuses a lot on Susan, Marilyn, and Valerie, which I love!! I heard an interview once where Frank described it as "the first book about the program to give the wives the credit they deserve" Lost Moon/Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell The same book was published under both names, so whichever one you're able to get with have the same content. It's the only book Jim wrote himself (unfortunately. I really wish he had written more). It mainly focuses on Apollo 13, but it has a little bit of an overview of his life/career. It's definitely the best telling of Apollo 13 out there. Flight by Chris Kraft A really good book overall. It has a lot fun stories/reasons why I love Chris Kraft in it, and it's just a really interesting overview of the space program from Mercury–Apollo, from the perspective of mission control. Failure Is Not An Option by Gene Kranz If I try to summarize this one it's going to sound exactly like Flight, but even though the general setup/idea is the same, they're both very different!! They both cover about the same time period, but it's really fun to see their different perspectives and the different stories they include/leave out. The Astronaut Wives Club by Lilly Koppel This one is a lot less about the program itself and more about the people in it. It includes a ton of stories of the different astronaut wives, and is a good overview of them personally. It focuses primarily on the wives of the Mercury 7, plus Marilyn Lovell, Jane Conrad, and a little bit about the the Apollo 11 wives. It was one of the first books I read about space, and the one that introduced me to Jim and Marilyn. Far Side of the Moon by Liisa Jorgensen About Frank and Susan Borman. It follows their whole relationship from high school through the space program and into retirement. It focuses heavily on Susan and her struggles with alcoholism and depression. It's an amazing book, although I will say it Made Me Cry. A lot. Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger It has a lot of the same content as Rocket Men, but it does include a decent number of different stories. Another really good description of Apollo 8 and all the reasons it's my favorite mission. It's written by the co-author of Jim's book. Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly Not really about the astronauts like the rest of these are, but it's an amazing space book and has a lot of good information about Mercury and the Pre-NASA days at Langley, plus a ton about the 60s in general and the civil rights movement as a whole. Overall I very strongly believe that everyone should read this book once in their lifetime.

That's the top list of books I've read that I can think of off the top of my head/by looking at my bookshelf, although I'm sure I'm forgetting some–not to mention all the one's on my list to read that I haven't gotten to yet.

Videos: Overall I've watched less than I've read, but I do still have some recommendations, primarily from archive footage, or occasionally more recent interviews/documentaries Archive video of the Apollo 11 crew on Face The Nation Overall there are a lot of Apollo 11 interviews that I kinda hate watching tbh–between reports asking the same (usually somewhat insensitive/nonsensical) questions, and the crew being uncomfortable doing PR stuff, I just usually don't enjoy watching them. But this is actually a pretty good/fun interview with the crew! They ask good questions, have good answers, and overall it doesn't give me the same level of second hand embarrassment as most Apollo 11 interviews lol Apollo 13 post-flight press conference Somewhat sad to watch, being that they just got back from Apollo 13–but overall a really interesting video, and a great way to learn about the mission from the crew directly. It's also where the clip that I was analyzing in this post came from. Apollo 8 crew – 40th anniversary reunion, reunion for the 50th anniversary of NASA, Rocket Men book release These are three of my favorite videos ever, and amazing examples of how funny this crew is/the way they can't go more than 5 minutes without making fun of each other. Apollo 8 homemade documentary, (original) (new) The entire Homemade Documentary channel on YouTube is amazing! I haven't actually gotten around to watching the version of the Apollo 8 one yet, which is why I linked both, since I can't give a direct review of the new one. The original is absolutely amazing though, one of my favorite Apollo 8 documentaries, and that's including the professionally made ones.

There are probably tons of good videos I'm forgetting, but unfortunately I don't have my saved videos organized nearly as well as the books I've read.

Other Resources: Some other random things I love that don't fall into the category of books or videos apollojournals.org Tons of information on the Apollo program. Transcripts, pictures, videos, reports, and tons of other random info apolloinrealtime.org The best source of mission audio/videos for Apollo 11, 13, and 17. I also absolutely love being able to hear the individual audio tracks from mission control for 11 and 13. There's always something new to find on there.