- Scott, David and Alexei Leonov with Christine Toomey. Two Sides of the Moon. London:
Simon & Schuster, 2004. ISBN 0-7432-3162-7.
- Astronaut David Scott flew on the Gemini
8 mission which performed the first docking in space, Apollo 9, the first
manned test of the Lunar Module, and commanded the Apollo 15 lunar landing, the first
serious scientific exploration of the Moon (earlier Apollo landing
missions had far less stay time and, with no lunar rover, limited
mobility, and hence were much more “land, grab some rocks, and scoot”
exercises). Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov was the first to walk in space
on Voskhod 2, led the training of cosmonauts for lunar missions and
later the Salyut space station program, and commanded the Soviet
side of the Apollo Soyuz Test Project in 1975. Had the Soviet
Union won the Moon race, Leonov might well have been first to walk
on the Moon. This book recounts the history of the space race as
interleaved autobiographies of two participants from contending
sides, from their training as fighter pilots ready to kill one
another in the skies over Europe in the 1950s to Leonov's handshake
in space with an Apollo crew in 1975. This juxtaposition works very
well, and writer Christine Toomey (you're not a “ghostwriter” when
your name appears on the title page and the principals effusively
praise your efforts) does a marvelous job in preserving the engaging
conversational style of a one-on-one interview, which is even more an
achievement when one considers that she interviewed Leonov through
an interpreter, then wrote his contributions in English which was
translated to Russian for Leonov's review, with his comments in
Russian translated back to English for incorporation in the text. A U.S. edition is scheduled for publication
in October 2004.
August 2004 