posted 04-27-2012 02:43 PM               

Foreword by Emilio Estefan

Born into a family of migrant workers, toiling in the fields by the age of six, Jose M. Hernàndez dreamed of traveling through the night skies on a rocket ship. Reaching for the Stars is the inspiring story of how he realized that dream, becoming the first Mexican-American astronaut.

Hernàndez didn't speak English till he was 12, and his peers often joined gangs, or skipped school. And yet, by his twenties he was part of an elite team helping develop technology for the early detection of breast cancer. He was turned down by NASA eleven times on his long journey to donning that famous orange space suit.

Hernàndez message of hard work, education, perseverance, of "reaching for the stars," makes this a classic American autobiography.

• Hardcover: 224 pages
  
• Publisher: Center Street (1 Sep 2012)
  
• ISBN-10: 1455522805
  
• ISBN-13: 978-1455522804

posted 09-20-2012 11:24 PM               

• The Space Review: Review: Reaching for the Stars

  "Reaching for the Stars" can be considered, in some respects, a campaign biography, especially with its publication just two months before the November election. But if you ignore those final pages about his decision to run for Congress, though, it is also a tale of success, with Hernandez, in the book's epilogue, helpfully enumerating the steps he followed to turn his childhood dreams into reality — steps, he says, can be used by anyone to "harvest your own stars," even if you're not interested in being an astronaut.

• SPACE.com: From the Farm to Space: Astronaut-Turned-Congressional Candidate Tells Story in New Book

  "I started out as what I would categorize as a typical migrant farm worker," Hernandez told SPACE.com in a recent interview. "Even though I was born here in the United States, I was born to immigrant parents. We would go back for three months at a time [to Mexico] and then we would spend nine months here in the United States following the harvest of the crop in the San Joaquin Valley of California."