Title : Starman: the Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin
Author : Piers Bizony, Jamie Doran
Pages : 256
Publisher : Walker & Amp Company
Published : April 12, 2011
Price : $16.00
ISBN : 10: 0802779506
This April will see the 50th anniversary of the most important event in all of human history: the first time any of us left the planet. On April 12, 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin pierced Earth’s thin shell of atmosphere to boldly go where no one had gone before. Yuri orbited the earth once in the Vostok 1, taking 108 minutes. Back on the ground, his smiling face captured the hearts of millions around the globe. Film stars, politicians and pop stars from Europe to Japan, India to the United States vied with each other to shake his hand.
Born in 1934, Gagarin entered training as a foundry-man at the age of 16, and it was then that he discovered a new love - flying. His first flight was on board an old Yak-18 trainer, and that made quite an impact on him. In 1953, he was accepted for pilot training in the Soviet air force and he later met and married his wife, Valentina, a nurse. It was when he had been posted to Nikel, a base near the Arctic Circle, that he was asked questions by some mysterious doctors. Within a few weeks, he and a host of other fighter pilots underwent a series of utterly demanding physical tests until eventually he and 19 others were declared the Soviet Union's first cosmonauts.
Gherman Titov and Gagarin, like the others, came under the scrutiny of the Chief Designer, Sergei Korolev, and the general in command of training, Nikolai Kamanin. Gagarin being first was more a political decision, even if both were equally ready in all other respects to be first. However grudgingly, Titov admits, "You know, they were right to choose Gagarin. The public loved him. It would therefore appear that the powers-that-be were also looking at Gagarin beyond the space flight, namely as an ambassador for the USSR.
Despite this immense fame, almost nothing is known about Gagarin or the exceptional people behind his dramatic space flight. Starman tells for the first time Gagarin's personal odyssey from peasant to international icon, his subsequent decline as his personal life began to disintegrate under the pressures of fame, and his final disillusionment with the Russian state. Putting an American on the Moon was a direct reaction to Gagarin's achievement, yet before that successful moonshot occurred, Gagarin himself was dead, aged just thirty-four, killed in a mysterious air crash.
Entwined with Gagarin's history is that of the breathtaking and highly secretive Russian space program - its technological daring, its triumphs and disasters. In a gripping account, Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony reveal the astonishing world behind the scenes of the first great space spectacular, and how Gagarin's flight came frighteningly close to destruction. There are any number of theories about Gagarin's death, and the conspiracy theorists have bandied about the possibility that the crash wasn't exactly an accident.
Piers Bizony is author of the award-winning 2001: Filming the Future a detailed account of the making of Stanley Kubrick's film, The Rivers of Mars: Searching for the Cosmic Origins of Life and Island in the Sky: Building the International Space Station. Jamie Doran of Atlantic Celtic Films is an international award-winning documentary producer. After seven years at BBC Television, he went into independent production, where many of his films have concentrated on lifting the lid of secrecy within the former Soviet Union.
Review Text Courtesy: http://www.amazon.com, http://news.discovery.com, http://www.jasonspeaking.com/
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