Growing Up With Spaceflight- Gemini contains the true story of what it was like for an average guy to literally grow up with the American space program. The premise being that some people were close to the space program, hands-on, working daily with the hardware and the technology that made history… the rest of us had to watch it on TV. The book is the second of a six volume series and follows the author from the through the days of Project Gemini as his ever shifting attention span follows the flight while being constantly distracted by Batman and Fireball XL5 and he managed to flunk the third grade. Along the way readers who also grew up in that era will read the accounts and say, Hey! That was me too! I did that with the models, I watched that on TV, I remember that day. Whoa! I didn’t flunk the third grade. Additionally, readers who were not yet born will be able to get an up-close and personal look though the keyhole of the door of time and experience what it was really like to grow up in that exciting era. Author Wes Oleszewski is known for his detailed historical narratives published in his 16 previous books that look at shipwrecks, now he turns that focus onto the golden era of America’s space program. Those readers who seek technical details about NASA’s manned space vehicles and rockets will not be disappointed. The author has, as always, dug deeper than previous writers into NASA’s documentation and pulled out fascinating and highly obscure details of the events. Working with two editors and one technical advisor who are, in their own right, experts in the history of spaceflight, the author managed to surprise even them with a few previously over-looked facts. Yet, although technically correct and fact-filled, the Growing Up With Spaceflight series is not a dry engineering account. Rather it is fun and witty read that will take the reader on a pleasure trip to a time gone-by. The author has gone to great lengths to add illustrations that are both informative and unique. As in all of his works, Wes Oleszewski has produced a book that is free of gratuitous sex and violence and he remains clear of the personal lives of the people who made the space program happen. This is a book of pleasure reading that avoids tabloid tidbits. Readers will enjoy this book and they will learn a thing or two as they do. By the time that they finish, they will be looking the rest of the series. All six volumes of the Growing Up With Spaceflight series are completed and will be released in 2016.
