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Summary
Summary
On October 4, 1957, as Leave It to Beaver premiered on American television, the Soviet Union launched the space age. Sputnik, all of 184 pounds with only a radio transmitter inside its highly polished shell, became the first man-made object in space; while it immediately shocked the world, its long-term impact was even greater, for it profoundly changed the shape of the twentieth century.
In his upcoming book, Washington journalist Paul Dickson chronicles the dramatic events and developments leading up to and emanating from Sputnik's launch. Supported by groundbreaking, original research and many recently declassified documents, Sputnik offers a fascinating profile of the early American and Soviet space programs and a strikingly revised picture of the politics and personalities behind the facade of America's fledgling efforts to get into space.
Although Sputnik was unmanned, its story is intensely human. Sputnik owed its success to many people, from the earlier visionary, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, whose theories were ahead of their time, to the Soviet spokesmen strategically positioned around the world on the day the satellite was launched, who created one of the greatest public-relations events of all time. Its chief designer, however--the brilliant Sergei Korolev--remained a Soviet state secret until after his death.
Equally hidden from view was the political intrigue dominating America's early space program, as the military services jockeyed for control and identity in a peacetime world. For years, former Nazi Wernher von Braun, who ran the U.S. Army's missile program, lobbied incessantly that his Rocket Team should be handed responsibility for the first Earth-orbiting satellite. He was outraged that Sputnik beat him and America into space. For his part, President Eisenhower was secretly pleased that the Russians had launched first, because by orbiting over the United States Sputnik established the principle of "freedom of space" that could justify the spy satellites he thought essential to monitor Soviet missile buildup. As Dickson reveals, Eisenhower was, in fact, much more a master of the Sputnik crisis than he appeared to be at the time and in subsequent accounts.
The U.S. public reaction to Sputnik was monumental. In a single weekend, Americans were wrenched out of a mood of national smugness and post-war material comfort. Initial shock at and fear of the Soviets' intentions galvanized the country and swiftly prompted innovative developments that define our world today. Sputnik directly or indirectly influenced nearly every aspect of American life, from the demise of the suddenly superfluous tail fin and an immediate shift towards science in the classroom to the arms race that defined the cold war, the competition to reach the Moon, and the birth of the Internet.
By shedding new light on a pivotal era, Paul Dickson expands our knowledge of the world we now inhabit, and reminds us that the story of Sputnik goes far beyond technology and the beginning of the space age, and that its implications are still being felt today.
Author Notes
Paul Dickson is the author of more than forty books, including The Joy of Keeping Score , The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary , Baseball's Greatest Quotations , and Baseball: The Presidents' Game . In addition to baseball, his specialties include Americana and language. He lives in Garrett Park, Maryland.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Dickson (The Electronic Battlefield) chronicles in detail the Soviet satellite Sputnik. The Soviet Union was propelled into international prominence on October 4, 1957, by becoming the first nation to successfully launch a satellite, beating the American program by several months. The Soviet spacecraft panicked Americans, who constantly looked up into the sky, spoke in hushed tones and feared that the satellite presaged an atomic attack. President Eisenhower remained calm and tried to lead the country through the media-generated crisis, but the Sputnik "debacle" helped the Democrats in the next election. Dickson chronicles the history of rocket research, including Nazi successes during WWII. American and Soviet troops vied to seize German scientists and hardware. Dickson examines the feuding between the services for control of the space program and candidly exposes the reasons for the lag in American research. Eisenhower gets high marks for his quiet mastery of the situation, pleased that the Soviets were first into space, since that set off a race to improve American education, even as it fueled an outbreak of UFO hysteria. Dickson, whose bibliography runs to 19 pages, completely understands the lure and lore of Sputnik and has done a solid job of synthesizing prior books on the subject. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The devastating impact of a Soviet satellite on the American public in the '50s. When Sputnik was put into orbit on October 4, 1957, Leave It to Beaver was first airing on TV. The juxtaposition of these two images-one of Communist technological superiority, the other of American gee-whiz innocence-is journalist Dickson's structural theme here. The US, like the Soviet Union, raided Nazi Germany after 1945, removing scientific equipment and personnel for re-use in the Cold War. That the Soviet Union was the first to exploit this science comes as no surprise to Dickson, who credits Sputnik with giving the complacent US the wakeup call it needed to advance in the space race. American scientists and the US military scoffed at scientist Robert Goddard, who could have vaulted the country in front of all others in the field of rocket technology. While his work was given little support, Germans and Soviets were studying and building on his designs. After the war, as the Americans and Soviets dissected German rockets, the US still didn't take the technology seriously. The army, navy, and air force all had their own missile programs, with the army's team under former Nazi Wernher von Braun probably being the most advanced and the most overlooked. With the launching of Sputnik, everything changed. Whereas US rockets could barely reach the upper reaches of the atmosphere, the Soviet Union had placed in space an object that flew over North America several times a day. In an era when nuclear war seemed imminent, the military saw the importance of such devices for spying on the enemy. Von Braun and others were given the green light. On a larger level, the American public also got into the act: it rejected decadent cars like the Edsel and advocated advanced science curriculums in the schools. The Internet even owes its existence to Sputnik, the author claims-precursors to the Web were created by rocket researchers. An excellent treatment of one of the early chapters of the Cold War.
Choice Review
A reporter who admits that he has been "obsessed" with the subject ever since the launch of Sputnik in 1957, Dickson has written a useful introduction to the development of the Soviet Satellite and its impact on the US. Using contemporary newspaper sources and more recent scholarly accounts of the beginning of what would become a space race between the superpowers, he nicely captures the sense of panic and confusion that Sputnik produced. Dickson portrays President Eisenhower as "the quiet unsung hero" in the midst of public uncertainty, partisan wrangling, and military infighting. The beach-ball-sized satellite, he points out, had a monumental impact on the US, leading to the creation of NASA, passage of the National Defense Education Act, and triggering an accelerated pace of applied research. A pleasure to read, Sputnik should appeal to all those interested in the dawn of the space age. It also has a more contemporary relevance, serving as a case study of the tendency of the American people, and most of its leaders, to overreact when faced with unexpected and unpleasant events. General readers; lower- and upper-division undergraduates. W. M. Leary University of Georgia
Library Journal Review
Space exploration is often portrayed as a U.S.-U.S.S.R. race, with the Soviet Union winning the initial lap by launching Sputnik, the earth's first artificial satellite. Yet as Dickson (The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary) reveals, for the United States, the race was also an internal competition, with the military (particularly Wernher von Braun's rocket team) and the Eisenhower administration grappling for control of the national space program. Eisenhower, who sought to demilitarize space and thereby open the skies to U.S. espionage satellites, eventually triumphed, establishing NASA as a civilian agency and successfully testing a clandestine satellite launch. Focusing on internal rivalries and including pre-Sputnik material, Dickson's book complements Robert A. Divine's The Sputnik Challenge (LJ 3/1/93), which considers the aftermath of Sputnik; James Killian's personal Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower: A Memoir of the First Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (LJ 1/15/78. o.p.); and the scholarly Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the Soviet Satellite (Harwood Academic, 2000; also issued as NASA Technical Memorandum 113448). For public and academic libraries. Nancy R. Curtis, Univ. of Maine Lib., Orono (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
Introduction | p. 1 |
1. Sputnik Night | p. 9 |
2. Gravity Fighters | p. 28 |
3. Vengeance Rocket | p. 49 |
4. An Open Sky | p. 76 |
5. The Birth of Sputnik | p. 94 |
6. Red Monday | p. 108 |
7. Dog Days | p. 134 |
8. American Birds | p. 168 |
9. Ike Scores | p. 191 |
10. Sputnik's Legacy | p. 223 |
Epilogue | p. 246 |
Appendix Sputnik's Long, Lexical Orbit | p. 249 |
Author's Note, Acknowledgments, and Dedication | p. 255 |
Notes | p. 258 |
Bibliography | p. 276 |
Index | p. 294 |