The Red Rockets' Glare by Asif A. Siddiqi

This is an innovative and significant contribution to both Russian history and the history of spaceflight. 'Asif Siddiqi is to be commended for gathering such an impressive array of secondary sources, memoirs, and newly discovered archival materials to describe the origins and evolution of the Soviet rocketry program. It is destined to become the classic work on the origin of the Soviet space program.' Michael J.

Superbly written and based on fundamentally new archival research, The Red Rockets' Glare illuminates the complex origins of spaceflight enthusiasm in Russia and the USSR in the century before the launch of Sputnik. 'Asif Siddiqi's book is a pathbreaking work in the history of rocketry and spaceflight and the history of Soviet science and technology. Based on many years of archival research, the. This is the story of people who made history.' Sergei Khrushchev, Brown University The Red Rockets' Glare is the first academic study on the birth of the Soviet space program and one of the first social histories of Soviet science. Siddiqi writes about people who paved the road in space - the bumpy road through Stalin's GULAG toward worldwide recognition. Examining the roots of Soviet success in space exploration, Asif Siddiqi writes about Konstantin Tsiolkovski - a humble Russian schoolteacher who became one of the greatest dreamers in the world and changed it forever. 'Asif Siddiqi, who has already written the best books on the Soviet space effort, has now given us a wonderful exploration of the social and cultural dimensions of this effort he has given voice to those on the periphery: the populist phenomena of utopian ideas and popular imagination.' Loren Graham, MIT and Harvard University

The Red Rockets' Glare by Asif A. Siddiqi