Failure Is Not an Option

Title: Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond
Author: Gene Kranz
Genre: Memoir
Pages: 416
Rating (out of 5 stars): ****
Reviewed by: Ben
Description: Gene Kranz was one of the original flight controllers hired at the newly-formed NASA in the early 1960's.  Using meticulous notes and old recordings, he tells the story of NASA sending the first man into space, the first successful orbit and docking of spacecraft, the tragedy of Apollo 1, the success of Apollo 11, and the near failure of Apollo 13.
Thoughts: This book is really superb.  Kranz does a great job of balancing story-telling with historical and technical details, with the result being a gripping tale of adventure in the "final frontier" of space.  Several things impressed me about the book: first, Kranz's writing style is perfect.  He sounds like a flight director who's not going to take any crap from anybody.  For me, this really helped me get into the setting.  Second, it was amazing how many risks these guys had to take to get to the moon by the end of the decade.  Obviously, the tried to minimize the risks as much as possible, but at the end of the day everything they were trying was brand new, and the margin for error was zero.  I can't believe they actually made it, especially given that they literally survived each mission by the skin of their teeth.  Third, I kept thinking throughout the book about how there really isn't an equivalent national goal today like the Space Race was in the 1960's.  I would love to really see the nation come together around something like we did 50 years ago.  Anyway, this was a great book that I would certainly recommend.
Disclaimer:  A few swear words.