AMERICANS IN ORBIT

With Shepard's flight at one end of the continuum and Glenn's at the other, this spans the full range of achievements and events in space travel. Projects Mercury and Vanguard, the Space Task Group and the NASA, experiments with the Redstone later supplanted by a focus on Atlas -- all these strange names and abbreviations fall into logical order. How the astronauts were chosen, what training devices were used to simulate space travel and detailed descriptions of the actual flights and recoveries of Shepard and Glenn are highlights in a careful summary of a complicated subject. Students who want a current and accurate rundown will find this worthwhile. But how fast it dates!