555 pgs, 1997, Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN 978-0801857485

McDougall's 1986 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History presents the U.S., Soviet and European space programs as a comparison of public policy. He taps into declassified material, archives and published literature and interviews key participants in the historical space missions from Sputnik I to Apollo 11 to give the full picture of the space race, and point out the relationship between political leadership and technological development.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I -- The Genesis of Sputnik

1. The Human Seed and Social Soil: Rocketry and Revolution
2. Political Rains and First Fruit: The Cold War and Sputnik
   
   Part II -- Modern Arms and Free Men: America Before Sputnik
   
3. Bashful Behemoth: Technology, The State, and the Birth of Deterrence
4. While Waiting for Technocracy: The ICBM and the First American Space Program
5. The Satellite Decision
   
   Part III -- Vanguard and Rearguard: Eisenhower and the Setting of American Space Policy
   
6. "A New Era of History" and a Media Riot
7. The Birth of NASA
8. A Space Strategy for the United States
9. Sparrow in the Falcon's Nest
10. The Shape of Things to Come
    
    Part IV -- Parabolic Ballad: Krushchev and the Setting of Soviet Space Policy
    
11. Party Line
12. The Missile Bluff
13. Hammers or Sickles in Space?
14. Space Age Communism: The Krushchevian Synthesis
    
    Part V -- Kennedy, Johnson, and the Technocratic Temptation
    
15. Destination Moon
16. Hooded Falcons: Space Technology and Assured Destruction
17. Benign Hypocrisy: American Space Diplomacy
18. Big Operator: James Webb's Space Age America
19. Second Thoughts
    
    Part VI -- The Heavens and the Earth: The First Twenty-five Years
    
20. Voyages to Tsiolkovskia
21. The Quest for a G.O.D.
22. A Fire in the Sun