The Race to Space set

VERY GOOD — Firm bindings. Crisp exteriors. Clean, unmarked pages. NOTE: VOLUME I: Very slight area of discoloration, front board. Slight gilt loss to page edges on textblock, primarily head. VOLUME II: Slight gilt loss to page edges on textblock; a few faint scratches to same. VOLUME III: Ditto gilt loss to textblock. VOLUME IV: Ditto gilt loss to textblock and a few scratches to same. VOLUME V: Ditto gilt loss and a couple of faint stains to foredge. All volumes show textblock/spine separation at head. Please inspect photos closely for condition details.

This 5 volume set, The Race to Space, was published by Easton Press in 1999 and issued in Collector Editions. Bound in handsome Emerald Green leather, and illustrated with stirring period photographs, these works chronicle the fierce competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to acheive superior spaceflight capability. Featured, in alphabetical order, are: A Man on the Moon: The Voyage of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin / Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox / First on the Moon by Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin / This New Ocean by William E. Burrows and The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.

Specifics of this series from the Easton Press website:

• Fully and tightly bound in genuine leather.
  22kt gold accents deeply inlaid on the "hubbed" spine.
  Heavy duty binding boards... .
  Superbly printed on acid-neutral paper... .
  Sewn pages – not just glued like ordinary books.
  ...moiré endpages and a satin-ribbon page marker.
  Gilded page ends.

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A MAN ON THE MOON — On the night of July 20, 1969, our world changed forever: two Americans, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, walked on the moon. . . . Now Andrew Chaikin tells the story of the Apollo missions as never before: through the eyes of the astronauts who made those heroic voyages. A decade in the making, A Man on the Moon is based on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with each of the twenty-four moon voyagers, as well as those who contributed unprecendented brain power, training, and teamwork on earth. With breathtaking immediacy, Chaikin conveys every aspect of the Apollo missions, from the rush of liftoff atop a Saturn V rocket to the heart-stopping touchdown on the moon, to the final hurdle of reentry
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APOLLO: THE RACE TO THE MOON — Here, for the first time, is the dramatic story of the Apollo space program. Murray and Cox recount how, in fewer than ten years, the men and women behind the scenes accomplished the extraordinary feat of landing a man on the moon--and changed the way we look at our world!

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FIRST ON THE MOON — First on the moon. The sound of the words themselves cannot convey their full meaning, the weight of wonder that they bear. The time, money, lives, will, knowledge - the total effort that went into putting man on the moon is beyond measurement. First on the Moon: A Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. is the exclusive story of Apollo 11 and the always thrilling and historic personal experiences of the three astronauts who put man on the moon.

It is a voyage in every sense of the word - through time, from President Kennedy's fateful pronouncement on May 25, 1961, that the United States would put man on the moon before the decade was out, and through space, with Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. . . . Life senior editor Gene Farmer and Life staff writer Dora Jane Hamblin have spent many months with - indeed, living with - the astronauts and their families. Not only is the flight excitingly and thoroughly documented, with the astronauts' own thoughts and words woven through the recorded transcript with Houston, but the atmosphere in the astronauts' homes during the flight is faithfully recorded.

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THIS NEW OCEAN — This New Ocean is based on 175 interviews with Russian and American scientists and engineers; on archival documents, including formerly top-secret National Intelligence Estimates and spy satellite pictures; and on nearly three decades of reporting. The impressive result is this fascinating story--the first comprehensive account--of the space age.

Here are the strategists and war planners; engineers and scientists; politicians and industrialists; astronauts and cosmonauts; science fiction writers and journalists; and plain, ordinary, unabashed dreamers who wanted to transcend gravity's shackles for the ultimate ride. The story is written from the perspective of a witness who was present at the beginning and who has seen the conclusion of the first space age and the start of the second.

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THE RIGHT STUFF — Men first flew into space in 1961, but until The Right Stuff was first published in 1979 few people had a sense of the most engrossing side of that adventure: namely, the perceptions and goals of the astronauts themselves, aloft and during certain remarkable odysseys on earth.

It is this, the inner world of the early astronauts, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and their confreres, that Tom Wolfe describes with his extraordinary powers of empathy. He shows us the bidden olympus to which all ambitious combat and test pilots aspired, the top of the pyramid of the right stuff. And we learn the nature of the ineffable pilot's grace without which all else meant nothing.

We see the men whose achievements dominated the flying fraternity in the late 1950's as the space age began, men like Chuck Yeager and Joe Walker, pilots of the first rocket planes, most notably the X-1 and the X-15. The selection of the Mercury astronauts in 1959 shook up the fraternity as thoroughly as had Yeager's breaking of the sound barrier twelve years before. Public excitement and concern over the space race with the Soviets immediately elevated the seven astronauts to the uneasy eminence of heroes, long before their first flight.

We see the seven men, in the very moment of their idolization by the outside world, struggling to gain the respect of their peers within the flying fraternity, even to the point of altering NASA's original conception of the astronaut's role in keeping with the unspoken prerequisites of the right stuff.

This handsome, leather bound 5 volume set would be a worthy addendum to your Collectible books library.