This is one of the best books written by Furniss. This books bring us the news as the ware in the Apollo era, we can relive every step of the Apollo mission and its accomplishes. The most interesting past of this books is the biographies of each astronauts and was has been of his life after the Apollo days. This book is definitely one of the best on its styles.

This is an excellent resource for children ages 9-12 who are interested in space. This full-color photographs are eye-catching and the text is interesting and informative. This book could be useful as a resource for research, but it may be limited if the research were too indepth. Overall, this is an excellent book and would make a good addition to a children's library collection, a classroom collection or a home collection.

My daughter, who is starting 4th grade, introduced me to this book at our local library. It is a welcome addition to your home reference collection, if you have children in elementary or even early middle school. The maps are clearly marked, easy to understand, and use color efficiently to display the local geography. The maps concentrate primarily upon cities, rivers, other bodies of water, and national boundaries. Perhaps some additional attention to geophysical features, such as mountain ranges, etc., would have been helpful. Still, your 4th-to-7th grade student should benefit immensely from this compact, detailed text.

Even if you already own a CD-ROM atlas for your computer, this book offers the convenience of quick reference when the reader does not have a computer handy. Technology is wonderful, but a book in the hand is worth a thousand CD-ROMs that one can't access for lack of a suitably equipped PC.

The author, Tim Furniss, is a prolific author of twenty books about spaceflight, spacecraft and the space program in general, as well as the author of numerous magazine articles about various aspects of space flight. In this book, the author presents an overview of the space race from the launching of the first Russian and US satellites until the first moon landing of Apollo 11, using numerous photographs, artist's renditions and graphs and a reasonable amount of supporting text. Even though much of the book, about a third, focuses of the first moon landing of Apollo 11, the remainder of the book covers the space race up to this point.

While many of the NASA photographs are the classic pictures from the Apollo program, the book also includes a good number of rarely seen pictures from the testing and buildup phases, as well as some photographs taken by the unmanned robotic explorers sent to the moon, which I found quite interesting. Oftentimes, the testing and buildup stages of any space launch is ignored and I found it refreshing the author did not forget this important part of the Apollo program. Furthermore, unlike many other texts on the USSR-US space race to the moon, this author provides many fascinating pictures of the Russian hardware, such as the N-1 moon rocket and the Vostok, which better helps depict the space race.

One final thought, I found the last chapter, "Where are They Now?" which describes the moon walkers post-Apollo lives, a fitting tribute and ending for the book.

Even though Amazon lists this book as no longer in print, I have seen this book still for sale at several local bookstores.