Dye’s memoir is a balanced mix of moments both banal and breathtaking.
A passionate look at the U.S. space shuttle program through the life’s work of the longest-serving flight director in NASA’s history.
As with many of his peers in the space and aeronautical industries, Dye’s occupational choice was inspired by SF literature and the romantic longing to live out such cosmic possibilities in real life. The author was among the earthbound heroes at NASA flight control who helped guide space shuttles through all aspects of a mission. A former scuba instructor who studied aeronautical engineering at the University of Minnesota, the author fondly recalls in scrupulous detail the highlights of his three-decade career as a top NASA flight controller. He combines folksy anecdotes (he uses the term “folks” a lot) with esoteric mechanical details to convey how these technologically remarkable yet fragile, temperamental shuttles worked—or sometimes didn’t. Although Dye’s impressive recall of every aspect of his job history is largely both engaging and informative, he is overly indulgent with the aeronautical shoptalk, severely testing general readers’ tolerance for acronyms (a common pitfall that both space and military memoirs share). On the whole, it’s the author’s simple anecdotes about everyday working life at mission control that make for the most readable, entertaining sections. For instance, Dye’s recounting of the 1990s Shuttle-Mir program, a famously cooperative gesture between Russia and the U.S., is an insider’s look at how two countries’ very different work philosophies merged to successfully complete an unprecedented mission. We also read about the unforgettable time employee negligence led to the spontaneous combustion of the office coffee maker, creating widespread panic among the caffeine-addicted mission control employees. Most insightful are Dye’s reflections on the 1986 Challenger disaster and the problematic mission control culture that led to this infamously televised catastrophe.
Dye’s memoir is a balanced mix of moments both banal and breathtaking.Pub Date: July 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-45457-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.
An author’s trip to Venice takes a distinctly Borgesian turn.
In November 2020, soccer club Venizia F.C. offered Nigerian American author Madu a writing residency as part of its plan “to turn the team into a global entity of fashion, culture, and sports.” Flying to Venice for the fellowship, he felt guilty about leaving his immigrant parents, who were shocked to learn upon moving to the U.S. years earlier that their Nigerian teaching certifications were invalid, forcing his father to work as a stocking clerk at Rite Aid to support the family. Madu’s experiences in Venice are incidental to what is primarily a story about his family, especially his strained relationship with his father, who was disappointed with many of his son’s choices. Unfortunately, the author’s seeming disinterest in Venice renders much of the narrative colorless. He says the trip across the Ponte della Libertà bridge was “magical,” but nothing he describes—the “endless water on both sides,” the nearby seagulls—is particularly remarkable. Little in the text conveys a sense of place or the unique character of his surroundings. Madu is at his best when he focuses on family dynamics and his observations that, in the largely deserted city, “I was one of the few Black people around.” He cites Borges, giving special note to the author’s “The House of Asterion,” in which the minotaur “explains his situation as a creature and as a creature within the labyrinth” of multiple mirrors. This notion leads to the Borgesian turn in the book’s second half, when, in an extended sequence, Madu imagines himself transformed into a minotaur, with “the head of a bull” and his body “larger, thicker, powerful but also cumbersome.” It’s an engaging passage, although stylistically out of keeping with much of what has come before.
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781953368669
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
A powerful melding of image and text inspired by Instagram yet original in its execution.
Smith returns with a photo-heavy book of days, celebrating births, deaths, and the quotidian, all anchored by her distinctive style.
In 2018, the musician and National Book Award–winning author began posting on Instagram, and the account quickly took off. Inspired by the captioned photo format, this book provides an image for every day of the year and descriptions that are by turns intimate, humorous, and insightful, and each bit of text adds human depth to the image. Smith, who writes and takes pictures every day, is clearly comfortable with the social media platform—which “has served as a way to share old and new discoveries, celebrate birthdays, remember the departed, and salute our youth”—and the material translates well to the page. The book, which is both visually impactful and lyrically moving, uses Instagram as a point of departure, but it goes well beyond to plumb Smith’s extensive archives. The deeply personal collection of photos includes old Polaroid images, recent cellphone snapshots, and much-thumbed film prints, spanning across decades to bring readers from the counterculture movement of the 1960s to the present. Many pages are taken up with the graves and birthdays of writers and artists, many of whom the author knew personally. We also meet her cat, “Cairo, my Abyssinian. A sweet little thing the color of the pyramids, with a loyal and peaceful disposition.” Part calendar, part memoir, and part cultural record, the book serves as a rich exploration of the author’s fascinating mind. “Offered in gratitude, as a place to be heartened, even in the basest of times,” it reminds us that “each day is precious, for we are yet breathing, moved by the way light falls on a high branch, or a morning worktable, or the sculpted headstone of a beloved poet.”
A powerful melding of image and text inspired by Instagram yet original in its execution.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-44854-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
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