Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space - The Untold Story of Space Exploration

by Stephen Walker Narrated by David Rintoul

Overview

“This remarkable account of the 1961 race into space is a thrilling piece of storytelling....It is high definition history: tight, thrilling and beautifully researched.” (The Times, London, Front Page Lead Review)

“Beyond has the exhilaration of a fine thriller, but it is vividly embedded in the historic tensions of the Cold War, and peopled by men and women brought sympathetically, and sometimes tragically, to life.”-Colin Thubron, author of Shadow of the Silk Road

09.07 am. April 12, 1961. A top secret rocket site in the USSR. A young Russian sits inside a tiny capsule on top of the Soviet Union's most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile-originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead-and blasts into the skies. His name is Yuri Gagarin. And he is about to make history.

Travelling at almost 18,000 miles per hour-ten times faster than a rifle bullet-Gagarin circles the globe in just 106 minutes. From his windows he sees the earth as nobody has before, crossing a sunset and a sunrise, crossing oceans and continents, witnessing its beauty and its fragility. While his launch begins in total secrecy, within hours of his landing he has become a world celebrity - the first human to leave the planet.

Beyond tells the thrilling story behind that epic flight on its 60th anniversary. It happened at the height of the Cold War as the US and USSR confronted each other across an Iron Curtain. Both superpowers took enormous risks to get a man into space first, the Americans in the full glare of the media, the Soviets under deep cover. Both trained their teams of astronauts to the edges of the endurable. In the end the race between them would come down to the wire.

Drawing on extensive original research and the vivid testimony of eyewitnesses, many of whom have never spoken before, Stephen Walker unpacks secrets that were hidden for decades and takes the reader into the drama of one of humanity's greatest adventures - to the scientists, engineers and political leaders on both sides, and above all to the American astronauts and their Soviet rivals battling for supremacy in the heavens.

Beyond is a gripping memoir of Yuri Gagarin's historic flight into space, detailing the risks taken by both the US and USSR during the Cold War and the intense competition between the two superpowers to achieve space travel.

HarperCollins 2024

Editorial Reviews

JUNE 2021 - AudioFile

In this riveting production, Stephen Walker's accessible scholarship illuminates Soviet Union cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s groundbreaking 1961 Earth orbit. Narrator David Rintoul’s pleasant baritone is the perfect companion to this revelatory slice of history. He seamlessly shifts between the aeronautic developments of competing nations to the launch of the first person into space. Light accents supplement nuanced characterizations of competing Soviet and American politicians, as well as Mercury 7 astronauts and Vanguard 6 cosmonauts. Sober honesty underscores the costs of their lauded accomplishments, as well. Given the Soviet Union’s intense secrecy, many interviews woven into this narrative add fresh perspectives. The maelstrom of emotions surrounding the momentous event vibrates off the page as Rintoul draws closer to Gagarin’s launch. A must-listen for all Space Age enthusiasts. J.R.T. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173219169
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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