One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong's Stellar American Journey

by Leon Wagener

Book Overview

On July 20, 1969 the whole world stopped. It was a day in which a man who grew up on a farm without electricity would announce, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." In this, the first ever biography of Neil Armstrong, Leon Wagener explores the man whose walk on the moon is still compared to humankind's progenitor's crawl out of the primordial ooze. And whose retreat back to a farm in his native Ohio soon after the last ticker tape...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312873433
• ISBN13: 9780312873431
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Best! Neil Armstrong quotes! Ever!

This book is extremely valuable, because its final page--the poetic summation of the entire book, and of Neil Armstrong's entire life--has the most important Neil Armstrong quotes of the entire Space Age: --- As for walking on the moon, sometimes I wonder if that really happened. I can honestly say--and it's a great surprise to me--that I have never had a dream about being on the moon. It's a great disappointment to me. - Neil Armstrong --- The first sentence should become the standard response of every American to the alleged moon landings. If Neil Armstrong doesn't know whether they were real, how can we? Of course we can't. The rest of the quotation is more subtle. Many friends to whom I have shown this quote do not initially understand it. They ask, "What difference do dreams make? Most people don't remember their dreams anyway." But that's not what the quotation is really about. Let's take a more familiar case. Let's say a Hollywood leading man gets a reputation as a playboy in fan magazines. But as he ages and never "settles down," rumors about him begin to swirl. Finally, as an older man, an authorized biography quotes him as saying, "I've never dreamt of sleeping with a woman. It's a great disappointment to me." What do you think he's trying to tell you?

NEIL ARMSTRONG - Will you ever tell us the real story?

Neil Armstrong may indeed have the biggest balls when it comes to performing daring macho stunts. Landing on the moon was humankind's grandest achievement...that and inventing computers. Armstrong got to be where he is TODAY becuase of his cool head, and ability to problem-solve when solutions seemed nonexistent. His upbringing in a small farm with no electricity and loads of religious influence had alot to do with the man today. What is truly shocking is that Mr. Armstrong is DIVORCED. What lead to the big D is not explained at all....but still -- this is an excellent biography about a man who refuses to discuss what really happend up there in our number one natural satellite. Why won't Armstrong come forward and pen his own story? Of all the astronaughts that landed on the moon, he's the first one and he is the ONLY one who has not written his account of it. My GOD! That outrages me and everybody in this great nation of ours. WHY he remains silent is a mystery - the author attributes his silence to a severe case of modesty, but I ain't buying that version of the story. WHY does Armstrong remain silent on what is considered man's hugest technical achievment in history? THe psychology on that alone could fill 800 pages. I still rate "One Giant Leap" 5 stars because it's about a man who won't talk. Read this book and pay attention to what is said between the lines. He won't talk about it...the author resorts to interrogating everybody in Armstrong's universe, not him nor his ex-wife. YES - Armstrong did remarry --- but what does it all mean? The woman who stood by his side during those frantic space shot years will forever be his life mate and soul mate. GOSH - the stories she must have heard. Or maybe Armstrong clammed up too long about it with her, which would explain the divorce proceedings. My opinion is that I am happy to read ANYTHING about this important man and his gigantic leap into the scientific discovery of the moon, life supporting necessities of deep space, and interpersonal relationships that he had with his 2 other space buddies and his immediate family. ALl those people could tell us more about this fantastic journey. THe cover photo is one that Armstrong took of his buddy, BUZZ ALDRIN, (The second man on the moon - he HATES when people point that out.) Buzz was too PO'd about being number 2, so he never did decide to be nice and snap a pix of Neil for posterity. So - Aldrin is the snapshot space man on the cover of this interesting book....every picture tells a story. Think of how mad you had to be if you REFUSED to take somebody's picture, and NASA was on your can to DO it now, but you refused over and over. That must have frustrated Ground Control immensely. Again - the psychology of inter space travel is something that has not really been much elaborated on. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to everybody, especially Mr. Neil Armstrong. He'd surely want to set some records straight after reading this book, and I agre

A GREAT READ

I really enjoyed it. It took me back to those times and the excitement of the moon landing, etc.

Neil's Excellent Adventure

Mr. Wagener's book is more than conventional biography. Wagener allows the people who have shared Neil's adventures, heroics, triumphs, near tragedies and sorrows tell his story in their own words. The time and effort the author put forth is commendable.

Joyful wonder about space over time

Neil Armstrong learned to fly before he was old enough to get a driver's license. The kid was obsessed with sky, speed, space and stars. Leon Wagener's "One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong's Stellar American Journey" refreshes my own memories of those childish wonderments. At 5, in 1957, I was charmed by the celebrated event of the Russian dog shot into space in "their" Sputnik, and tickled again by the US launching "our" chimp in 1961.This international-space-program kiddie-party of lab animals (actually, what the grownups called "the space race") captured the imagination of my generation, in what we now look back on as a relatively innocent time. I did an elementary school science fair project on "Animals Used in Space Experimentation." Posterboard and magic marker were involved. In the idyllic earliest 1960s, JFK (seemingly a hero to all of creation save for my staunch Republican parents) spoke passionately of striving for the stars, putting a man on the moon. Some say the assassination of JFK in 1963 was the end of that innocent era. We who were alive then will always remember where we were at the shattering moment we heard about that. Time stood still. Things were never the same. They basically went to hell in a handbag.By 1969, six years past that assassination, the US was politically and socially divided over a range of incendiary issues, and cynicism was gradually seeping into the viewpoints of a substantial segment of society (not yet to the full ripening of the post-Watergate era). But, that year, as we simultaneously watched in awe, the "one giant step" that Neil Armstrong finally planted on the lunar surface was an ultimately memorable, timestopping moment of wonder. But this time it was a joyous one. My cynical hippie friends and I reverted to innocent kids watching the impossible happen before our very eyes, enjoying a respite from that era's corrosive malaise with its toxic evening news. I will never forget where I was or who I was with in that much happier, timeless moment. We jumped up and down on the bed with genuine excitement. We had grown somewhat jaded toward spacemen in capsules now--but this was so much cooler that dogs or chimps or any of the other men who had gone up in space. Armstrong got out, took his giant step, and said The Words. The spirit generated by the climax of Armstrong's mission was "One Giant Leap" in itself, an event that could somehow bridge the chasm from the giddiness of Sputnik, over the national post-JFK-traumatic syndrome, to a unified national invigoration. Experienced if even for a twinkling in time, Armstrong's mission was also a leap of good will. Wagener's background as an investigative journalist served him well for this painstakingly-researched, highly-detailed biography. He combines that information with some historic images and includes his own recent photo of Armstrong. Taking us nonjudgementally through trends and events of the day, Wagener provides readers with crucial, colorful context. The