What do you think?
Rate this book
The Earth Gazers
It will soon be the fiftieth anniversary of the first manned mission to the moon, when men first saw for themselves the Earth as a sphere falling through space―they saw a world without borders and these images continue to give hope and inspire.
Only twenty-four people have seen the whole earth. The most beautiful and influential photographs ever made were taken, almost as an afterthought, by the astronauts of the Apollo space program from the moon. They inspired a generation of scientists and environmentalists to think more seriously about our responsibility for this tiny oasis in space, this “blue marble” falling through empty darkness.
The Earth Gazers is a book about the long road to the capture of those unforgettable images. It is a history of the space program and of the ways in which it transformed our view of the earth and changed the lives of the astronauts who walked in space and on the moon. It is the story of the often blemished visionaries who inspired that journey into space: Charles Lindbergh, Robert Goddard and Wernher Von Braun, and of the courageous pilots who were the first humans to escape the Earth's orbit. These twenty-four people saw Earth in all its singular glory, and the legacy of the stories of these "Earth Gazers," resonate richly even today.
Only twenty-four people have seen the whole earth. The most beautiful and influential photographs ever made were taken, almost as an afterthought, by the astronauts of the Apollo space program from the moon. They inspired a generation of scientists and environmentalists to think more seriously about our responsibility for this tiny oasis in space, this “blue marble” falling through empty darkness.
The Earth Gazers is a book about the long road to the capture of those unforgettable images. It is a history of the space program and of the ways in which it transformed our view of the earth and changed the lives of the astronauts who walked in space and on the moon. It is the story of the often blemished visionaries who inspired that journey into space: Charles Lindbergh, Robert Goddard and Wernher Von Braun, and of the courageous pilots who were the first humans to escape the Earth's orbit. These twenty-four people saw Earth in all its singular glory, and the legacy of the stories of these "Earth Gazers," resonate richly even today.
464 pages, Hardcover
Published September 1, 2017
6 people are currently reading
603 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 12, 2018
“The Guide says there is an art to flying", said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” ― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
For millennia man wished he could fly like the birds, people had been up in hot air balloons since 1783, but it wasn't until 1904 with the first powered flight from the Wright Brothers that we saw the dawn of a new era. These early pioneers of the air began to fly around America, Charles Lindbergh became the first to fly from America to Paris in his epic flight and flight changed the way we connected with others around the world. But people still wanted to reach for the stars.
It would take a World War for humanity to develop the technology that would make this possible though and it was the losing side that gave the rest of the world the rockets that would enable men to finally leave the grip of gravity for the first time. That brilliant scientist was Wernher Von Braun, a former Nazi, who spent the billions of dollars that the US government wanted to spend in the Cold War space race. This space race put men in orbit, gave us technologies that we are using today and 65 years later after the first powered flight, put the first men on the moon.
Two pictures from the Apollo missions Earthrise, taken during the first manned mission, and The Blue Marble, taken in the final one, became some of the most reproduced and influential photos of all time. It became the image that inspired the environmental movements around the world as people realised that this small blue planet was our home and that getting more than half a dozen people off at any one time was near impossible. We only have this planet. If we bugger it up, who knows what could happen
This is an enjoyable book on the rise of man to overcome gravity, rise from the surface of the earth and achieve the monumental task to stand on the surface of our nearest satellite. Good overview of the history of flight and the links that those first pilots had to the rocket men.
For millennia man wished he could fly like the birds, people had been up in hot air balloons since 1783, but it wasn't until 1904 with the first powered flight from the Wright Brothers that we saw the dawn of a new era. These early pioneers of the air began to fly around America, Charles Lindbergh became the first to fly from America to Paris in his epic flight and flight changed the way we connected with others around the world. But people still wanted to reach for the stars.
It would take a World War for humanity to develop the technology that would make this possible though and it was the losing side that gave the rest of the world the rockets that would enable men to finally leave the grip of gravity for the first time. That brilliant scientist was Wernher Von Braun, a former Nazi, who spent the billions of dollars that the US government wanted to spend in the Cold War space race. This space race put men in orbit, gave us technologies that we are using today and 65 years later after the first powered flight, put the first men on the moon.
Two pictures from the Apollo missions Earthrise, taken during the first manned mission, and The Blue Marble, taken in the final one, became some of the most reproduced and influential photos of all time. It became the image that inspired the environmental movements around the world as people realised that this small blue planet was our home and that getting more than half a dozen people off at any one time was near impossible. We only have this planet. If we bugger it up, who knows what could happen
This is an enjoyable book on the rise of man to overcome gravity, rise from the surface of the earth and achieve the monumental task to stand on the surface of our nearest satellite. Good overview of the history of flight and the links that those first pilots had to the rocket men.
November 2, 2019
2.5. Wasn't what it made out to be (about the 24 astronauts who were the first to see the whole of the Earth). Instead you get part history of flight, part psychoanalysis, part Lindbergh biography, part Nazi apologia, part religious studies, part all out Zen at the end of the book - I feel like the author had a whole bunch of agendas he wanted to push for and never really succeeded in conveying what those were, much less in achieving them. For example, you'd be reading about space flight and then suddenly there's this absolutely random one-line paragraph telling you how many letters NASA received about religion, and then back to space flight.
I'd read a Lindbergh biography, or a book about the history of photographs taken from space - just not everything lumped together. By the end of the book I was speeding through; I get wrapping up the stories of key figures in the book, but chronicling Lindbergh's and Von Braun's deaths felt unnecessary to me. Why not chronicle instead the 24 astronauts it was supposed to be about? I also had absolutely no idea what the point of the last Rhetorical Question chapter was meant to be?
The repeated attempts to justify Lindbergh's anti-Semitism and Von Braun's Nazi connections were somewhat disturbing. Props to him for engaging with those issues, but trying then to counter it by - for example - repeating glowing testimonials from other people is pretty problematic, because it feels like making excuses or justifying something that can't and shouldn't be justified.
Also, one senses a religious undertone in the way that he goes about dealing with secularism vs religion, as if experiencing the transcendental without believing in a god is somehow less enriching. Fine if you believe that, but to propagate it - and in a narrative that purports to tell a balanced account - is, uh. Not good.
There are better books about space out there.
I'd read a Lindbergh biography, or a book about the history of photographs taken from space - just not everything lumped together. By the end of the book I was speeding through; I get wrapping up the stories of key figures in the book, but chronicling Lindbergh's and Von Braun's deaths felt unnecessary to me. Why not chronicle instead the 24 astronauts it was supposed to be about? I also had absolutely no idea what the point of the last Rhetorical Question chapter was meant to be?
The repeated attempts to justify Lindbergh's anti-Semitism and Von Braun's Nazi connections were somewhat disturbing. Props to him for engaging with those issues, but trying then to counter it by - for example - repeating glowing testimonials from other people is pretty problematic, because it feels like making excuses or justifying something that can't and shouldn't be justified.
Also, one senses a religious undertone in the way that he goes about dealing with secularism vs religion, as if experiencing the transcendental without believing in a god is somehow less enriching. Fine if you believe that, but to propagate it - and in a narrative that purports to tell a balanced account - is, uh. Not good.
There are better books about space out there.
September 17, 2018
A fascinating book. Couldn’t be more interesting. Potter’s story begins with Charles Lindbergh in Cape Kennedy watching the launch of Apollo 8. That scene describes the range of the book, from Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic to the Apollo missions to the moon.
Included are the popular heroes of aviation and space history: Lindbergh, Alan Sherman, Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong. But we are introduced to others whose legacy is more obscure, like the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky who “lived on bread and water, his hair uncut, his clothes eaten away.” In 1903 he wrote a paper on the mathematics of space flight.
The Lindbergh story alone makes the read worthwhile. Most of us know about the Spirit of St. Louis, the kidnapping and murder of his son and the World War II era speech that forever after tagged him as a anti-Semite. But I knew little else about him. In in later life he devoted himself to saving endangered species. He became something of a recluse, although that didn’t stop him from visiting Europe to see the two or three families he had produced with German mistresses.
Rocketry and space exploration needed war to advance. The rockets that would launch both American and Russian spaceships were derived from advances made by the Nazis during World War II. While the scientists responsible may have had visions of visiting the Moon or Mars, the Nazis paying the bills were looking for weapons to knock out England. After the war, the German scientists were divided up between the U.S.and Russia like the spoils of war. One, Wernher Von Braun, was to the become the engineering rockstar of the U.S. space program.
Many of these scientists were an important part of the two countries space advancements. The Cold War fueled the space race and was the reason that the U.S. and Russia made billions of dollars available to their programs. Von Braun for one knew who to play this game, dredging up the frightening prospect of being behind Russia whenever approval or funding was needed. And as Cold War fever cooled in the late 60’s and 70’s, so did government interest in space programs.
Potter goes beyond the dates and accomplishments of the various noteworthy and record-breaking flights and focuses on the experience of the pilots, astronauts and cosmonauts.
For example, Lindbergh, toward the tail end of his trans-Atlantic flight, described feeling that the fuselage behind him was filled with ghostly beings “vaguely outlined forms, transparent, moving, riding weightless with me in the plane.”
True to the title of the book many of these astronauts put into words what it was like to see the earth from a perspective that only a few dozen have ever had. Apollo 8 astronaut Frank Borman, a member of the first space crew to leave earth’s gravitational pull, said, “We were the first human beings to see the world in its majestic totality. This must be what God sees.’” Gemini astronaut Mike Collins described his sighting of his home planet as follows: ”The little planet is so small out there in the vastness that at first I couldn’t even locate it. And when I did a tingling of awe spread over me. There it was shining like a jewel in a black sky.”
For some it was a religious experience. Many returned home and became environmentalists. I doubt that few if any of these explorers of the heavens would buy into Trumpian climate change denial. They came back to earth feeling the need to protect it and in spite of the nationalism that often surrounded the space program the experience left them with a more global view.
NASA was a micromanaging sort of organization and one of the aspects of this story that I enjoyed was the stories of the astronauts who as a group were not that keen on being told what to do. When John Glenn heard that NASA didn’t want their astronauts taking “tourist photos” from space, he went out and bought a $20 camera to sneak on board with him. Another of the astronauts hid a corned beef sandwich in his space suit to better enjoy the flight.
As a baby boomer who came of age during the space race, I always sort of figured that NASA had everything under control before they zapped a man or two up into the cosmos. Wrong. There were a frightening number of failed tests and problems associated with many of these flights. When Frank Borman’s wife Susan was advised by a NASA official that he had a 50/50 chance of returning safely she actually began planning his memorial service.
This is not my usual reading fare. I doubt that I ever would have found my way to the shelf where this book is placed in most book stories. I got it as an unexpected premium after making a donation to a listener-sponsored radio station (thank you WFMU). Sure glad I did. Potter tells the story brilliantly and has crammed in as many interesting facts and anecdotes as you could possibly fit onto 400 pages. It may seem weird to describe a book about aviation history as a page-turner, but trust me on this one.
Included are the popular heroes of aviation and space history: Lindbergh, Alan Sherman, Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong. But we are introduced to others whose legacy is more obscure, like the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky who “lived on bread and water, his hair uncut, his clothes eaten away.” In 1903 he wrote a paper on the mathematics of space flight.
The Lindbergh story alone makes the read worthwhile. Most of us know about the Spirit of St. Louis, the kidnapping and murder of his son and the World War II era speech that forever after tagged him as a anti-Semite. But I knew little else about him. In in later life he devoted himself to saving endangered species. He became something of a recluse, although that didn’t stop him from visiting Europe to see the two or three families he had produced with German mistresses.
Rocketry and space exploration needed war to advance. The rockets that would launch both American and Russian spaceships were derived from advances made by the Nazis during World War II. While the scientists responsible may have had visions of visiting the Moon or Mars, the Nazis paying the bills were looking for weapons to knock out England. After the war, the German scientists were divided up between the U.S.and Russia like the spoils of war. One, Wernher Von Braun, was to the become the engineering rockstar of the U.S. space program.
Many of these scientists were an important part of the two countries space advancements. The Cold War fueled the space race and was the reason that the U.S. and Russia made billions of dollars available to their programs. Von Braun for one knew who to play this game, dredging up the frightening prospect of being behind Russia whenever approval or funding was needed. And as Cold War fever cooled in the late 60’s and 70’s, so did government interest in space programs.
Potter goes beyond the dates and accomplishments of the various noteworthy and record-breaking flights and focuses on the experience of the pilots, astronauts and cosmonauts.
For example, Lindbergh, toward the tail end of his trans-Atlantic flight, described feeling that the fuselage behind him was filled with ghostly beings “vaguely outlined forms, transparent, moving, riding weightless with me in the plane.”
True to the title of the book many of these astronauts put into words what it was like to see the earth from a perspective that only a few dozen have ever had. Apollo 8 astronaut Frank Borman, a member of the first space crew to leave earth’s gravitational pull, said, “We were the first human beings to see the world in its majestic totality. This must be what God sees.’” Gemini astronaut Mike Collins described his sighting of his home planet as follows: ”The little planet is so small out there in the vastness that at first I couldn’t even locate it. And when I did a tingling of awe spread over me. There it was shining like a jewel in a black sky.”
For some it was a religious experience. Many returned home and became environmentalists. I doubt that few if any of these explorers of the heavens would buy into Trumpian climate change denial. They came back to earth feeling the need to protect it and in spite of the nationalism that often surrounded the space program the experience left them with a more global view.
NASA was a micromanaging sort of organization and one of the aspects of this story that I enjoyed was the stories of the astronauts who as a group were not that keen on being told what to do. When John Glenn heard that NASA didn’t want their astronauts taking “tourist photos” from space, he went out and bought a $20 camera to sneak on board with him. Another of the astronauts hid a corned beef sandwich in his space suit to better enjoy the flight.
As a baby boomer who came of age during the space race, I always sort of figured that NASA had everything under control before they zapped a man or two up into the cosmos. Wrong. There were a frightening number of failed tests and problems associated with many of these flights. When Frank Borman’s wife Susan was advised by a NASA official that he had a 50/50 chance of returning safely she actually began planning his memorial service.
This is not my usual reading fare. I doubt that I ever would have found my way to the shelf where this book is placed in most book stories. I got it as an unexpected premium after making a donation to a listener-sponsored radio station (thank you WFMU). Sure glad I did. Potter tells the story brilliantly and has crammed in as many interesting facts and anecdotes as you could possibly fit onto 400 pages. It may seem weird to describe a book about aviation history as a page-turner, but trust me on this one.
March 26, 2018
I think this book lacked focus. All the descriptions of the book talk about how the 24 astronauts who left earth orbit to travel around the moon came back changed by the experience. You do get some of that, but the majority of the book is about the origin of spaceflight, from Goddard through Apollo. You get a lot of Lindbergh and Von Braun, and quite a bit on the atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who sued over the Apollo 8 Genesis reading.
There are historical errors throughout. The Bumper missiles were never known as Hermes II. That was an entirely different missile. And there was no astronaut named Ed Cernan.
The author makes a point to say that he doesn't use the terms astronauts and cosmonauts to differentiate which nation launches a person into space. He considers them all astronauts. Yet throughout the book, he refers to Soviet/Russian cosmonauts as cosmonauts, and American astronauts as astronauts. I don't get it. There were also typographical errors scattered throughout the text.
I feel there was very little here that hasn't been covered in other books on spaceflight.
There are historical errors throughout. The Bumper missiles were never known as Hermes II. That was an entirely different missile. And there was no astronaut named Ed Cernan.
The author makes a point to say that he doesn't use the terms astronauts and cosmonauts to differentiate which nation launches a person into space. He considers them all astronauts. Yet throughout the book, he refers to Soviet/Russian cosmonauts as cosmonauts, and American astronauts as astronauts. I don't get it. There were also typographical errors scattered throughout the text.
I feel there was very little here that hasn't been covered in other books on spaceflight.
March 6, 2018
Puzzling book. Fundamentally it is a history of the space program focusing more on personalities than technology. This was interesting, I didn’t realize the role played by Charles Lindbergh. But it tries to differentiate itself from other histories by focusing on photographs taken of earth from space, yet the first photograph didn’t get mentioned until well over halfway through the narrative. Additionally there were some odd digressions into the history of the atheist movement in America, while interesting it seemed out of place.
June 11, 2018
Only twenty-four people have seen the whole Earth for themselves - the crews of the nine Apollo missions that went to the moon between 1968 and 1972.
I found the title to be a bit misleading, as the book is divided into three sections and only one is dedicated to the Apollo astronauts.
If I knew then what I know now, I like to think I would have paid more attention to the Apollo missions as a young teenager. I would not have believed that almost 50 years after the end of the program that no one has been back to the Moon - or on to Mars!
I found the title to be a bit misleading, as the book is divided into three sections and only one is dedicated to the Apollo astronauts.
If I knew then what I know now, I like to think I would have paid more attention to the Apollo missions as a young teenager. I would not have believed that almost 50 years after the end of the program that no one has been back to the Moon - or on to Mars!
November 30, 2017
This is a good introductory book to flight and the space program. I’ve already read a lot about the American space program so a lot of that was repeat information for me. However, A great bibliography and references - I’m definitely going to keep it in mind for future reading!
March 4, 2018
Wish I could have rated it zero. Needs major editing. And it's Gene Cernan, not Ed Cernan.
April 15, 2018
Needs editing. At one extreme the book reads like a set of wikipedia posts and at the other it feels like drifting ruminations. I was hoping for a stronger narrative.
October 27, 2019
One of the most well-researched books I've ever read.
April 24, 2024
Great! Brought the moon missions to life. I'm happy I read this book.
Read
August 21, 2020Not at all what I expected even after reading the synopsis.
December 11, 2023
Utter shit
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews