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Beyond : the astonishing story of the first human to leave our planet and journey into space / Stephen Walker.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2021]Copyright date: ©2021Edition: First U.S. editionDescription: x, 502 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
  • still image
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780062978158
  • 0062978152
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
"Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by William Collins, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers." -- Verso.
Prologue: Fifteen minutes before launch -- Four months earlier. Pallo's dogs ; Who let a Russian in here? ; The house in the forest ; Inauguration ; Shame and danger ; The American team ; The Soviet Team ; The King ; Subject 65 ; A hell of a ride -- Decision. The risk equation ; At our heals ; Ivan Ivanovich ; The biggest missile site in the world ; The price of progress ; Boosters and dummies ; The Military-Industrial Commission -- Final countdown. Brinkmanship ; Just in case ; The egg timer ; Chimp barbecue ; Chosen ; Opening pitch ; Roll out ; Night -- Launch. A mother's love ; Key to start ; The first seventeen minutes ; The next thirty-two minutes ; Moscow calling ; A beautiful halo ; Ba-boom! ; Gagarin's field ; Triumph and defeat ; The ball on the hill ; Party time -- Epilogue: Endgame.
Summary: "A young Russian sits inside a tiny capsule on top of the Soviet Union's most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile--originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead--and blasts into the skies. His name is Yuri Gagarin. And he is about to make history. Traveling at almost 18,000 miles per hour--ten times faster than a rifle bullet--Gagarin circles the globe in just 106 minutes. From his windows he sees the earth as nobody has before, crossing a sunset and a sunrise, crossing oceans and continents, witnessing its beauty and its fragility. While his launch begins in total secrecy, within hours of his landing he has become a world celebrity--the first human to leave the planet."-- Publisher's description
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 629.45 W184 Available 33111010828420
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"This remarkable account of the 1961 race into space is a thrilling piece of storytelling. . . . It is high definition history: tight, thrilling and beautifully researched."--The Times, London, Front Page Lead Review

"Beyond has the exhilaration of a fine thriller, but it is vividly embedded in the historic tensions of the Cold War, and peopled by men and women brought sympathetically, and sometimes tragically, to life."--Colin Thubron, author of Shadow of the Silk Road

09.07 am. April 12, 1961. A top secret rocket site in the USSR. A young Russian sits inside a tiny capsule on top of the Soviet Union's most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile--originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead--and blasts into the skies. His name is Yuri Gagarin. And he is about to make history.

Travelling at almost 18,000 miles per hour--ten times faster than a rifle bullet--Gagarin circles the globe in just 106 minutes. From his windows he sees the earth as nobody has before, crossing a sunset and a sunrise, crossing oceans and continents, witnessing its beauty and its fragility. While his launch begins in total secrecy, within hours of his landing he has become a world celebrity - the first human to leave the planet.

Beyond tells the thrilling story behind that epic flight on its 60th anniversary. It happened at the height of the Cold War as the US and USSR confronted each other across an Iron Curtain. Both superpowers took enormous risks to get a man into space first, the Americans in the full glare of the media, the Soviets under deep cover. Both trained their teams of astronauts to the edges of the endurable. In the end the race between them would come down to the wire.

Drawing on extensive original research and the vivid testimony of eyewitnesses, many of whom have never spoken before, Stephen Walker unpacks secrets that were hidden for decades and takes the reader into the drama of one of humanity's greatest adventures - to the scientists, engineers and political leaders on both sides, and above all to the American astronauts and their Soviet rivals battling for supremacy in the heavens.

"Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by William Collins, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers." -- Verso.

Prologue: Fifteen minutes before launch -- Four months earlier. Pallo's dogs ; Who let a Russian in here? ; The house in the forest ; Inauguration ; Shame and danger ; The American team ; The Soviet Team ; The King ; Subject 65 ; A hell of a ride -- Decision. The risk equation ; At our heals ; Ivan Ivanovich ; The biggest missile site in the world ; The price of progress ; Boosters and dummies ; The Military-Industrial Commission -- Final countdown. Brinkmanship ; Just in case ; The egg timer ; Chimp barbecue ; Chosen ; Opening pitch ; Roll out ; Night -- Launch. A mother's love ; Key to start ; The first seventeen minutes ; The next thirty-two minutes ; Moscow calling ; A beautiful halo ; Ba-boom! ; Gagarin's field ; Triumph and defeat ; The ball on the hill ; Party time -- Epilogue: Endgame.

"A young Russian sits inside a tiny capsule on top of the Soviet Union's most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile--originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead--and blasts into the skies. His name is Yuri Gagarin. And he is about to make history. Traveling at almost 18,000 miles per hour--ten times faster than a rifle bullet--Gagarin circles the globe in just 106 minutes. From his windows he sees the earth as nobody has before, crossing a sunset and a sunrise, crossing oceans and continents, witnessing its beauty and its fragility. While his launch begins in total secrecy, within hours of his landing he has become a world celebrity--the first human to leave the planet."-- Publisher's description

Includes bibliographical references (pages 469-486) and index.

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