Second paragraph of third chapter:
There were many models for us to choose from: John Glenn, with his sense of obligation and higher purpose. Tough, intense, cocky Gus Grissom, the kind of guy who didn’t care if the sun came out or not. Scott Carpenter and Gordon Cooper were independent and adventuresome and seemed willing to pay the price. They both did.
This was the third of three astronaut memoirs that I got in 2020 after reading this article, the first two being Michael Collins’ superb Carrying the Fire and Al Worden’s entertaining Falling to Earth. I would rank All American Boys between the other two. There are some very good parts. The books starts with the Apollo 1 fire, in which three of Cunningham’s friends and colleagues died horribly; and then it backtracks to become more of a social history of the US space programme, looking very much at the human side of the astronauts of the time, warts, sex, and all. Cunningham himself flew only one flight, Apollo 7, the first after the Apollo 1 disaster, but shares his pride in everything that the Apollo programme (and before it the Mercury and Gemini programmes) achieved, and reflects a bit on what being an astronaut meant at the peak of his career.
The last section of the book, added in 2003 after the original publication in 1977, is about what has Gone Wrong with NASA since the glory days, and is rather relentlessly Grumpy Old Man, railing against various targets such as political correctness in hiring, and Washington’s obsession with keeping the Russian space programme afloat. Even this has some fascinating moments – I had forgotten about the horrifying near-disaster of Soyuz 5, for instance. But Cunningham slightly loses the run of himself and vents personal grievances without much supporting evidence.
Anyway, most of it is well worth reading. You can get it here.
This was both the non-fiction book that had lingered longest on my unread shelves, and my top unread book acquired in 2020. Next on those piles respectively are Coming of Age: The Sexual Awakening of Margaret Mead by Deborah Blum, and Amnesty by Lara Elena Donnelly.
