Review: Epic Rivalry

by Jeff Foust
Monday, November 5, 2007

Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story of the Soviet and American Space Race
by Von Hardesty and Gene Eisman
National Geographic Press, 2007
hardcover, 368 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-1-4262-0119-6
US$28

One might be tempted to think that all the hullabaloo surrounding the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik would have died down by now, a month after the actual anniversary. Of course, there’s no such luck for those who might have grown weary of the coverage of the anniversary, since it really marks the start of a series of 50th anniversary events that will span the next few years—this past weekend, for example, marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 2 and its canine payload, Laika—including the anniversary of the launch of the first US satellite, Explorer 1, next January, and the 50th anniversary of the formation of NASA next October. That leaves plenty of opportunities for more books about the history of the Space Age, and the early Space Race between the US and USSR in particular, such as Von Hardesty and Gene Eisman’s Epic Rivalry.

As the title suggests, Epic Rivalry focuses on the early heated competition between the US and the USSR, from 1957 through the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. (An epilogue hurriedly goes through American and Russian space efforts from 1969 to the present.) The book offers a fairly straightforward, chronological review of that era, as well as the events of the 1940s and 1950s that led up to the beginning of the Space Age. If there are central characters in the book, they are, unsurprisingly, Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun, supported by the other engineers, politicians, and astronauts and cosmonauts of that era. The chapters are separated by two- and four-page sidebars on technical topics ranging from orbital mechanics to the use, or lack thereof, of atomic propulsion. The book includes a good deal of black-and-white and color photography, some of which, particularly from Russia, has rarely, if ever, been published before.

The subtitle of the book promises the “inside story” of the Space Race, but readers already with some familiarity with the history of that era, there are few new revelations. That may be because the book relies heavily on secondary sources, including other books and articles (including several articles from this publication); the book’s endnotes reveal few historical documents or other primary sources, including interviews. One exception is the book’s foreword, written by Sergei Khrushchev, son of Nikita and himself an engineer who worked for a time on the Soviet space program. His insider’s point of view offers, in that brief section of the book, an interesting look at the early Soviet space program and its internecine battles; at one point, Khrushchev describes Korolev as doing “what he did best—the elimination of his rivals.”

By itself, there is little to fault Epic Rivalry: the text offers a good overview of the history of the Space Race between the US and USSR, and the photos complement the book well. The only disappointment is for those already familiar with the basic history of that era and looking for new details, or that inside story the book promised: there are few new insights, and certainly no history-reshaping revelations, to be found here. Undoubtedly the last word has yet to be written about the Space Race in general, or its origins in particular, but now, thanks to the recent crop of books like Epic Rivalry, the story is looking very familiar.

Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site and the Space Politics and Personal Spaceflight weblogs. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone, and do not represent the official positions of any organization or company, including the Futron Corporation, the author’s employer.

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