Of a Fire on the Moon
Written by Norman Mailer
Narrated by MacLeod Andrews
4/5
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About this audiobook
For many, the moon landing was the defining event of the twentieth century. So it seems only fitting that Norman Mailer—the literary provocateur who altered the landscape of American nonfiction—wrote the most wide-ranging, far-seeing chronicle of the Apollo 11 mission. A classic chronicle of America’s reach for greatness in the midst of the Cold War, Of a Fire on the Moon compiles the reportage Mailer published between 1969 and 1970 in Life magazine: gripping firsthand dispatches from inside NASA’s clandestine operations in Houston and Cape Kennedy; technical insights into the magnitude of their awe-inspiring feat; and prescient meditations that place the event in human context as only Mailer could.
Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer was born in 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In 1955, he was one of the co-founders of The Village Voice. He is the author of more than thirty books, including The Naked and the Dead; The Armies of the Night, for which he won a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; The Executioner's Song, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize; Harlot's Ghost; Oswald's Tale; and The Gospel According to the Son. He lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with his wife, the novelist Norris Church Mailer.
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Reviews for Of a Fire on the Moon
45 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5LIFE hired writer Norman Mailer to cover the Apollo 11 Moon shot; his three-part feature was the longest non-fiction piece ever published by the magazine. That piece, enhanced and extended, became “Of a Fire on the Moon,” in which Mailer examined both the science of space travel and the psychology of those involved. “Moonfire” contains excerpts from that book, documenting the development of NASA and the Apollo 11 mission, looking at life inside the command module and on the lunar surface. Hundreds of photographs from NASA archives, private collections, and magazine archives accompany the text. There is also a short bibliographical piece on Norman Mailer, written by J. Michael Lennon.Highly recommended.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Extraordinary, I am so glad to have read this. Mailer's use of the third person 'Aquarius' is awkward, but works once you get the hang of it. As someone that isn't old enough to remember this (I was born during the last Apollo Mission, 17), this really brought home the experience, especially in dealing with the astronauts as men doing an incredibly tough job. Mailer, writing in 1970, also successfully anticipates the 70s: 'Yet even this model of the future was too simple. For the society of the rational and the world of the irrational would be without boundaries... Sex would be a new form of currency in both worlds - on that you could count. The planner and the swinger were the necessary extremes of the computer city, and both would meet in the orgies of the suburbs."
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On topic, off topic, Mailer is a literary live wire. This is much more than sheer reportage, it's rumination, philosophy, history, egomania, and stylistic pyrotechnics. Sometimes, Mailer goes so far afield that you wonder if he will ever return to the topic. But even in these digressions, he's brilliant, provocative, and sometimes even wise. It's a roller coaster ride.
Do not come to this book simply for history. Come to it to be involved in the mind of Mailer as much as the Apollo project. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Norman Mailer's version of the Apollo 11 moon landing is interesting, though rather self-absorbed. It began as magazine coverage, but Norman made it into another of his studies of the effects of media and technology on American Life.