Race to the Moon; America's Duel With the Soviets

Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 1993. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Good. x, [2], 222, [4] pages. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. Includes Acknowledgments, Epilogue, Notes, Selected Bibliography, and Index. 28 black and white photographs in the photo section after page 84. Slight creasing and sticker residue on spine. William B. Breuer was a 20-year-old platoon sergeant, who landed with the first assault waves on D-Day in Normandy, and saw actions in five campaigns. Later he founded a daily newspaper and for 10 years served as a publisher. Among his many awards were 17 from the armed forces for his newspaper's support of a strong national defense. He also worked with local and network television news departments, on-camera personalities, executives, print media, and with the White House press corps. In 1982, he began writing full-time, mainly on military history with a focus on human drama. In five years, 11 of his books have been published, six of them becoming main selections of Military Book Club. In 1984 he was named U.S. airborne's "Author of the Year." Race to the Moon is a suspenseful thriller about the 30-year clash between the United States and the Soviet Union to be the first to put a man on the moon. This true account is heavy with intrigue, espionage, and controversy. Beginning with a 1961 pledge by President John F. Kennedy to plant the Stars and Stripes on the lunar surface by the end of the decade, the story flashes back to World War II. The Germans were 25 years ahead in rocket development. In September 1944, 60-foot-long V-2 rockets began raining down on London. In 1945, a handful of U.S. Army officers scored a coup: They stole 100 of the huge V-2s that had been in an underground factory. They were dismantled and slipped out of Germany. Then began a search for German rocket scientists in the Third Reich, with the Americans and British on one side and the Russians on the other. Wernher von Braun and 126 of his rocket team members were shipped to the United States and began working secretly on missile development.