Wernher von Braun: The Man Who Sold the Moon

(Hardback)

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Description

This is a biography of the young German aristocrat who created Hitler's most advanced terror weapon, the V-2 rocket, and who came to the USA under the Army's "Project Paperclip" to develop missiles essential to the Cold War. It claims that the US Army, in their zeal to have von Braun's team of scientists working for American interests, covered up what they knew about his complicity in Nazi causes and abetted him in the perpetuation of the myth he created about his past.

Reviews

[T]his biography makes a convincing case that [von Braun] was also a war criminal, his past sanitized for expediency. The book may provoke moral outrage and a reassessment of the history of America's space program, launched with the help of 118 German rocket scientists brought here from Hitler's Third Reich.-Publishers Weekly
Excellent pictures, end notes, lengthy bibliography, and index....a fine new piece about the space scientist's contribution.-Society for German American Studies
Piskiewicz does a very good job in exploring the American, Russian, and German political, personal, and social factors that hindered or promoted the development of rockets and eventual travel into space. Highly recommended. General readers; undergraduates; graduates.-Choice
The Man Who Sold the Moon is lucidly written, well presented, has a comprehensive reference list and bibliography, and is definitely worth reading.-Isis
"This biography makes a convincing case that von Braun was also a war criminal, his past sanitized for expediency. The book may provoke moral outrage and a reassessment of the history of America's space program, launched with the help of 118 German rocket scientists brought here from Hitler's Third Reich."-Publishers Weekly
"Excellent pictures, end notes, lengthy bibliography, and index....a fine new piece about the space scientist's contribution."-Society for German American Studies
"Piskiewicz does a very good job in exploring the American, Russian, and German political, personal, and social factors that hindered or promoted the development of rockets and eventual travel into space. Highly recommended. General readers; undergraduates; graduates."-Choice
"The Man Who Sold the Moon is lucidly written, well presented, has a comprehensive reference list and bibliography, and is definitely worth reading."-Isis
"[T]his biography makes a convincing case that [von Braun] was also a war criminal, his past sanitized for expediency. The book may provoke moral outrage and a reassessment of the history of America's space program, launched with the help of 118 German rocket scientists brought here from Hitler's Third Reich."-Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

DENNIS PISZKIEWICZ has been an enthusiast of space exploration since his childhood in the 1950s. He has taught college-level chemistry and biochemistry and has been the recipient of a NASA fellowship. His interest in the history of science and technology inspired him to write The Nazi Rocketeers: Dreams of Space and Crimes of War (1995) and From Nazi Test Pilot to Hitler's Bunker: The Fantastic Flights of Hanna Reitsch (1997), both published by Praeger.