One Giant Leap
The Untold Story of How We Flew to the Moon
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Narrated by:
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Fred Sanders
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By:
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Charles Fishman
About this listen
The New York Times best-selling, "meticulously researched and absorbingly written" (The Washington Post) story of the trailblazers and the ordinary Americans on the front lines of the epic Apollo 11 moon mission.
President John F. Kennedy astonished the world on May 25, 1961, when he announced to Congress that the United States should land a man on the Moon by 1970. No group was more surprised than the scientists and engineers at NASA, who suddenly had less than a decade to invent space travel.
When Kennedy announced that goal, no one knew how to navigate to the Moon. No one knew how to build a rocket big enough to reach the Moon, or how to build a computer small enough (and powerful enough) to fly a spaceship there. No one knew what the surface of the Moon was like, or what astronauts could eat as they flew there. On the day of Kennedy’s historic speech, America had a total of 15 minutes of spaceflight experience - with just five of those minutes outside the atmosphere. Russian dogs had more time in space than US astronauts. Over the next decade, more than 400,000 scientists, engineers, and factory workers would send 24 astronauts to the Moon. Each hour of space flight would require one million hours of work back on Earth to get America to the Moon on July 20, 1969.
"A veteran space reporter with a vibrant touch - nearly every sentence has a fact, an insight, a colorful quote or part of a piquant anecdote" (The Wall Street Journal), and in One Giant Leap, Fishman has written the sweeping, definitive behind-the-scenes account of the furious race to complete one of mankind’s greatest achievements. It’s a story filled with surprises - from the item the astronauts almost forgot to take with them (the American flag), to the extraordinary impact Apollo would have back on Earth, and on the way we live today. From the research labs of MIT, where the eccentric and legendary pioneer Charles Draper created the tools to fly the Apollo spaceships, to the factories where dozens of women sewed spacesuits, parachutes, and even computer hardware by hand, Fishman captures the exceptional feats of these ordinary Americans. "It’s been 50 years since Neil Armstrong took that one small step. Fishman explains in dazzling form just how unbelievable it actually was" (Newsweek).
©2019 Charles Fishman (P)2019 Simon & SchusterListeners also enjoyed...
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Travelling at almost 18,000 miles per hour - 10 times faster than a rifle bullet - Yuri 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.
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A remarkable story on many levels
- By Dipam on 03-22-22
By: Stephen Walker
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Stealth
- The Secret Contest to Invent Invisible Aircraft
- By: Peter Westwick
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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On a moonless night in January 1991, a dozen US aircraft appeared in the skies over Baghdad. To the Iraqi air defenses, the planes seemed to come from nowhere. Each aircraft was more than 60 feet in length and with a wingspan of 40 feet, yet its radar footprint was the size of a ball bearing. Here was the first extensive combat application of Stealth technology. And it was devastating.
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Good Overview of the original development
- By Amazon Customer on 08-01-22
By: Peter Westwick
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Into the Black
- The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her
- By: Rowland White, Richard Truly
- Narrated by: Eric Meyers
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Using interviews, NASA oral histories, and recently declassified material, Into the Black pieces together the dramatic untold story of the Columbia mission and the brave people who dedicated themselves to help the United States succeed in the age of space exploration. On April 12, 1981, NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral. It was the most advanced, state-of-the-art flying machine ever built, challenging the minds and imagination of America's top engineers and pilots.
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Great Story About a Flawed Spacecraft
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Rocket Billionaires
- Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the New Space Race
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- Narrated by: Erin Moon
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
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For the larger-than-life personalities now staking their fortunes on the development of rocket ships, the new race to explore space could be a dead end, a lucrative opportunity - or the key to humanity's salvation. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos take center stage in this fast-paced narrative as they attempt to disrupt the space economy, feed their own egos, and maybe even save the world.
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Interesting book; hard to listen to
- By K. Thai on 04-12-18
By: Tim Fernholz
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Our Robots, Ourselves
- Robotics and the Myth of Autonomy
- By: David A. Mindell
- Narrated by: David Chandler
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In Our Robots, Ourselves, David Mindell offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of robotics today, debunking commonly held myths and exploring the rapidly changing relationships between humans and machines. Drawing on firsthand experience, extensive interviews, and the latest research from MIT and elsewhere, Mindell takes us to extreme environments-high atmosphere, deep ocean, and outer space - to reveal where the most advanced robotics already exist.
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MUST READ
- By ryan salcido on 10-01-16
By: David A. Mindell
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Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program
- By: Pat Duggins
- Narrated by: Pat Duggins
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Journalist Pat Duggins, National Public Radio's resident "space expert", chronicles the planning stages of the Space Shuttle program in the early 1970s, the thrill of the first flight in 1981, construction of the International Space Station in the 1990s, and the decision in the early 2000s to shut the program down.
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End of the Shuttle
- By Jean on 09-25-14
By: Pat Duggins
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The Department of Mad Scientists
- Inside DARPA, the Path-Breaking Government Agency You've Never Heard Of
- By: Michael Belfiore
- Narrated by: Michael Belfiore
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
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The first-ever inside look at DARPA - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - the maverick and controversial group whose futuristic work has had amazing civilian and military applications, from the Internet to GPS to driverless cars
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meh
- By Patrick on 12-22-09
By: Michael Belfiore
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First Man
- The Life of Neil A. Armstrong
- By: James R. Hansen
- Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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When Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon’s surface in 1969, the first man on the Moon became a legend. In First Man, author James R. Hansen explores the life of Neil Armstrong. Based on over 50 hours of interviews with the intensely private Armstrong, who also gave Hansen exclusive access to private documents and family sources, this "magnificent panorama of the second half of the American twentieth century" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) is an unparalleled biography of an American icon.
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Not really 'unabridged'
- By A Reader on 06-06-18
By: James R. Hansen
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Empires of the Sky
- Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World
- By: Alexander Rose
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 22 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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At the dawn of the 20th century, when human flight was still considered an impossibility, Germany’s Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin vied with the Wright Brothers to build the world’s first successful flying machine. As the Wrights labored to invent the airplane, Zeppelin fathered the remarkable airship, sparking a bitter rivalry between the two types of aircraft and their innovators that would last for decades, in the quest to control one of humanity’s most inspiring achievements. And it was the airship—not the airplane—that led the way.
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Actually, a One-Sided Story
- By JP on 08-03-20
By: Alexander Rose
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Moon Shot
- The Inside Story of America's Apollo Moon Landings
- By: Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton, Jay Barbree, and others
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, and the space race was born. Desperate to beat the Russians into space, NASA put together a crew of the nation's most daring test pilots: the seven men who were to lead America to the moon. The first into space was Alan Shepard; the last was Deke Slayton, whose irregular heartbeat kept him grounded until 1975. They spent the 1960s at the forefront of NASA's effort to conquer space, and Moon Shot is their inside account of what many call the 20th century's greatest feat - landing humans on another world.
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A Definitive Summary of Our Manned Space Missions
- By Robert on 08-15-19
By: Alan Shepard, and others
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Red Moon Rising
- Sputnik and the Hidden Rivals That Ignited the Space Age
- By: Matthew Brzezinski
- Narrated by: Charles Stransky
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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On October 4, 1957, a time of Cold War paranoia, the Soviet Union secretly launched the Earth's first artificial moon. No bigger than a basketball, the tiny satellite was powered by a car battery. Yet, for all its simplicity, Sputnik stunned the world.
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awesome
- By Thomas on 06-25-09
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A Fiery Peace in a Cold War
- Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon
- By: Neil Sheehan
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 19 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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From Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic A Bright Shining Lie, comes this long-awaited, magnificent epic. Here is the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history - and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War is a masterly work about Schriever’s quests to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust.
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Schriever rhymes with beaver.
- By John Gardner on 11-13-09
By: Neil Sheehan
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Nuking the Moon
- And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board
- By: Vince Houghton
- Narrated by: Vince Houghton
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1958, the US Air Force nuked the moon as a show of military force. In 1967, the CIA sent live cats to spy on the Soviet government. In 1942, the British built a torpedo-proof aircraft carrier out of an iceberg. Of course, none of these things ever actually happened. But in Nuking the Moon, intelligence historian Vince Houghton proves that abandoned plans can be just as illuminating - and every bit as entertaining - as the ones that made it.
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Manchild writes book filled with his opinion
- By Just One More Opinion On The Internet on 08-31-19
By: Vince Houghton
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What listeners say about One Giant Leap
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Smoke
- 06-24-19
Loved It
Loved this book! I learned so many interesting things about the race for the moon
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- Richard
- 07-10-19
Enjoyed it
Especially interesting was the frank discussion of the economics and wavering political support related to NASA through the years as well as the impact, years later, of technology we take for granted today, that then, was built from scratch to facilitate the moonshot.
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- Shane
- 06-25-22
Worth it if you’re into it, but not THAT into it
To start, though well done, the narration is incredibly slow. Making an already filler heavy book slower than necessary. Second, very repetitive, get like the publisher gave them a word count, akin to a school essay without enough content. Finally, the story told was great, I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about the complexities/logistics of the Apollo missions. I felt it was really beating a dead horse when it comes to the politics of it though. In my opinion, anyone who reads a book this sense about Apollo would more than likely know that motive. Even if they didn’t, it was repeated so much I think I’d still be bored of it. Additionally, the fact checking is iffy, so I wouldn’t take anything said as gospel.
Worth a read if you’re a space enthusiast, I personally found it to be quite moving.
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- Justin Copeland
- 08-24-21
Good book, same history in a new direction
I loved how Charles helps to give appreciation to what Apollo did for the future of America, the cost notwithstanding.
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- Kevin
- 06-20-20
Great Facts but Choppy
One Giant Leap is extremely good for those looking to have a better understanding of what took place to land a man on the moon. However, if you are looking for a book that’s a chronological historical reference, this probably isn’t the book for you at this time. Highly recommended you read it sometime though!
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- Buckeye Blonde
- 08-11-19
Brilliant Brain Motivation
This was beyond fascinating to me as a 6th grade girl during Apollo 11 who was more interested in the Beatles & The Monkeys than in astronauts. I listened with great eagerness & now want to buy the book to read for myself & to keep.
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- Michael A Vogt
- 07-21-21
I thought I knew a lot about the US space program.
This book had more new to me info than any book or documentary I’ve consumed.
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- Mary Leahy
- 09-09-20
Space travel
I really enjoyed listening to this book about the history of space travel. I learned a lot about it.
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- cbspock
- 08-18-19
Putting Apollo in context
I really enjoyed this book. It’s one of the first ones I have read that connected the dots from the space program to the world we live in today
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- GraceAgnes
- 10-26-19
A great title! Neil Armstrong summarized it perfectly.
Charles Fishman does a great job of presenting the Apollo moon landings in an historical perspective. I am old enough to remember the entire NASA space program: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Voyager, Skylab, all the Space shuttle missions, Hubble, numerous Mars rovers, the International space station, the whole fantastic discovery of what’s out there in space. Fishman’s comparison of the successful U.S. manned moon missions to the debacle of the Vietnam War, both hallmarks of the 1960s, is a great historical snapshot of the time. His analysis of the technical challenges: no rockets large enough, no computers small enough, no software or guidance systems to operate space capsules that had yet to be designed; all while catching up to and then passing the Soviet Union’s early achievements in space flight, is presented in an interesting narrative. No one knew how, let alone how to do it within the decade as proposed by U.S. President John Kennedy. The 50 years since Apollo missions ended, has not sent people beyond earth orbit, but the digital age that followed, is a direct result of the technology push the Apollo program initiated. Fishman’s analysis includes, political, monetary, social, and technical perspectives.
If you are old enough to remember the moon landings, ‘One Giant Leap’, is a great trip down memory lane. Younger readers, for whom the moon landings are something from the history books, will find plausible explanations as to why NASA did not immediately follow going to the moon with manned missions to Mars. Instead of Mars we got the digital age, a direct spinoff of the Apollo moon mission. I am writing this review on my smart phone, the great grand child of the computers and software that had to be developed to get the Apollo mission space capsules to the moon and home again.
‘One Giant Leap, ‘ is not just about the invention of space technology but also the invention of the digital age we all live in today, presented in the context of the time, both then and now. Have fun, it’s a great story, well told.
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