• Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power by Meghan O’Sullivan is, quite simply, the most important book written about oil since Daniel Yergin’s 1990 classic, The Prize. A Harvard professor and former assistant to President George W. Bush, Ms. O’Sullivan has written both a definitive short history of the fracking/horizontal drilling revolution and a comprehensive geopolitical theory of its far-reaching—and not at all obvious—implications. It isn’t light reading, but Windfall is smart, well-written, and very much worth the effort.
• I am of that generation of American boys who can still tell you, at the drop of a hat, the names of the seven original Mercury astronauts. (Full disclosure: there’s a mnemonic to it. All seven surnames start with one of only three letters.) Thus it was inevitable that I was going to love Robert Kurson’s new book Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon. In truth, it’s impossible not to love it.
JFK’s epic challenge—to land men on the moon and bring them safely home before the 1960s ended—was in deep jeopardy in 1968. After the Apollo 1 fire claimed the lives of three astronauts in January 1967, the program had been significantly set back—just as evidence was accumulating that the Soviet effort was accelerating. The decision was made to recast Apollo 8, originally scheduled to be an earth orbital flight, into a lunar orbital one. NASA and Frank Borman’s three-man crew had all of 16 weeks to re-engineer the mission.
In the event, the flight was engineering perfection. No one who has seen it in the intervening half century will ever forget Bill Anders’ photograph “Earthrise.” And no one who heard it will ever forget the astronauts, on their own initiative, reading from the Book of Genesis on Christmas Eve. Truly, as someone wrote to the crew afterward, “You saved 1968.” Rocket Men is a riveting account of a great American moment. Not to be missed, and a slam dunk holiday gift for the aging rocket boy on your list.
© 2018 Nick Murray. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. All these books were reviewed upon publication in Nick’s monthly newsletter Nick Murray Interactive. You may download a sample issue at www.nickmurraynewsletters.com.