When the Soviet Union launched the first orbital satellite, Sputnik I, Americans panicked. The Soviets had nuclear weapons, the Cold War was underway, and now the USSR had taken the lead in the space race. Members of Congress and the press called for an all-out effort to launch a satellite into orbit. With dire warnings about national security in the news almost every day, the armed services saw space as the new military frontier. But President Eisenhower insisted that the space effort, which relied on military technology, be supervised by civilians so that the space race would be peaceful. The Navy's Vanguard program flopped, and the Army, led by ex-Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and a martinet general named J. Bruce Medaris (whom Eisenhower disliked), took over. Meanwhile, the Soviets put a dog inside the next Sputnik, and Americans grew more worried as the first animal in space whirled around the Earth.
Throughout 1958 America went space crazy. UFO sightings spiked. Boys from Brooklyn to Burbank shot model rockets into the air. Space-themed beauty pageants became a national phenomenon. The news media flocked to the launchpads on the swampy Florida coast, and reporters reinvented themselves as space correspondents. And finally the Army's rocket program succeeded. Determined not to be outdone by the Russians, America's space scientists launched the first primate into space, a small monkey theynicknamed Old Reliable for his calm demeanor. And then at Christmastime, Eisenhower authorized the launch of a secret satellite with a surprise aboard.
A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey memorably recalls the infancy of the space race, a time when new technologies brought ominous danger but also gave us the ability to realize our dreams and reach for the stars.
About the Author:
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael D'Antonio is the author of many acclaimed books. His work has also appeared in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and many other publications.
Critical Reviews:
A genial look at the earliest days of the space race. With the 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first man-made object to orbit the earth, the Soviet Union delivered arguably the most severe psychological blow of the Cold War. Keeping other failed attempts quiet, the Russians quickly followed up this propaganda victory with two more satellites, one carrying the camera-friendly dog Laika. With a light and companionable touch, Pulitzer Prize-winner D'Antonio (Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams, 2006, etc.) examines a shaken America's answer to this challenge. Predictably, ambitious politicians criticized Eisenhower for allowing America to lag. Competitive military services squabbled among themselves while U.S. scientists went quietly to work. Chief among them were dogged James Van Allen, discoverer of radiation belts surrounding the globe; intense Nicholas Christofilos, responsible for the first big experiment in space, albeit one requiring the detonation of atomic bombs; and brilliant Wernher von Braun, the erstwhile German rocketeer so indispensable that the government quietly airbrushed his Nazi past. (For more on this, see Michael J. Neufeld's Von Braun, 2007.) The story's charm, however, lies in D'Antonio's evocation of the average American's response to the dawning space age, which makes a nice contrast to Matthew Brzezinski's big-man approach in Red Moon Rising (2007). The public evinced a mixture of dread-it's no accident that this period brought a rash of UFO sightings-and excitement that ranged from the provincial boosterism of rocket-building Huntsville, Ala., to the wide-open, boomtown atmosphere of Cocoa Beach and rocket-firing CapeCanaveral, Fla. Within two years America caught up, launching four satellites and one monkey named Gordo. Ahead lay the formation of NASA, the beginning of the manned space program and momentous triumphs almost obliterating the fumbled beginning, when the failure of a Vanguard rocket launch allowed critics to cry, "Flopnik."Recovers for a new generation the thrill of a pioneer quest and the spirit of an age that already seems like ancient history. 
