"First Man"

First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong (James Hansen)

The imaginitively named authorized biography of Neil Armstrong (not to be confused with the Albert Camus book of the same name). I feel for the author; Armstrong is apparently legendarilly taciturn, which makes for a lot of sentances like "Neil doesn't remember..." or "Neil couldn't confirm that..." This may sound annoying, but I found it kind of charming; Armstrong's quiet, reserved self-confidence seems very commendable to me (and familiar; Armstrong reminds me of a certain someone's older sister, actually). What does get annoying is how technical the book can be. I understand - in fact, I applaud - the level of care and detail that goes into the moon landing (and the preparation and immediate aftermath). What I don't understand is why this level of detail is gone into for the entire part of the book leading up to the moon landing. Do we really need to be given a rundown on the difference between the average height and weight of the first versus the second group of astronauts (to provide one example)? The amazon review points out that the author actually counts up how many shells, bombs, and rockets were fired per month when Neil is a fighter pilot in the Korean war, and this is exactly as boring and as tedious as you think it is - any interesting events are rendered lifeless by an endless parade of dry technical details and meaningless figures. The author even starts early, giving us 10 generations of the Armstrong clan before Neil is even born. Bizarrely, the opposite occurs at the end of the book -after the moon landing, it's like a switch has been flipped; The remainder of the book - and there isn't much - is basically "Uh, then he never gave any interviews, the end."

My recommendation: The moon landing and the parts immediately surrounding it are about a third of the book, and they're a great third of a book. This is where the author's endless attention to detail is a powerful positive instead of a deadly dull negative, and what could in the wrong hands be boring (since you know the outcome already presumably) or tedious (given the amount of technical detail) is where the book shines and almost makes plodding through the rest of it bearable. The thing is, you don't really need to plod through the rest of the book. Skip until when Neil starts working as a test pilot, and close the book after he returns home from the "Giant Step" tour coming off the moon landing. You'll have a well-written, gripping account. Read the whole thing, like I did, and you'll have a slog with a cracking middle. (Admittedly, the author remains humorless, managing to turn Buzz Aldrin's amusing anecdote about being the first man to pee his pants on the moon into a paragraph-long investigation of who truly peed in his pants on the moon first, but this somehow feels fitting given Armstrong's character and desire to get it right, no matter what makes the best story.)

Grade:
If you just read the part I recommend: A-
Entire book: C-