As Americans, we know we were first to land on the moon. However, most Americans aren’t aware that we weren’t the first country with a man in space. USSR citizen Yuri Gagarin circled the globe in just 106 minutes, seeing the earth the way no one but a handful of animals had before. The new history Beyond celebrates that flight as part of the 60th anniversary. While the USSR tested secretly, the United States struggled to keep up. At the height of the Cold War, suddenly space supremacy became a huge deal.
Stephen Walker goes through so much of the details that were kept as secrets, even from USSR country men and Gagarin’s family, as he describes the history of the program, those who tested and created the rockets that went into space, and what was hidden from the United States as major state secrets.
Beyond is a fabulous book and I hope to see more from Walker in the future.
