posted 01-10-2022 12:06 PM               

Is this for real? Colin has never mentioned anything about this upcoming book.

Soviets in Space: Russia's Cosmonauts and the Space Frontier
by Colin Burgess

A deeply researched, beautifully illustrated chronology of the Soviet Union's extraordinary success in the pioneering years of space exploration.

• Hardback, 240 pages
  
• Reaktion Books (July 11, 2022)
  
• ISBN 10: 1789146321
  
• ISBN 13: 9781789146325

posted 01-10-2022 03:41 PM               

I did not want to make any formal announcements until the publishers began to publicize the book themselves. However it is a companion book to my earlier effort, "The Greatest Adventure," which was released by Reaktion last year and named as Book of the Week by London's Guardian newspaper.

posted 01-18-2022 07:58 PM               

While on the subject, I received some interesting news through the week that a Chinese publisher has arranged through Reaktion Books for a Chinese language edition of "The Greatest Adventure" to be published - a real and intriguing first for me.

posted 04-21-2022 10:54 AM               

Soviets in Space: Russia's Cosmonauts and the Space Frontier
by Colin Burgess

In this deeply researched chronology, Colin Burgess describes the then Soviet Union's extraordinary success in the pioneering years of space exploration. Within a decade, the Soviets not only launched the world's first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, but they also were the first to send an animal and a human being into Earth orbit. In the years that followed, their groundbreaking missions sent a woman into space, launched a three-man spacecraft, and included the first person to walk in space.

Six decades on from the historic spaceflight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, Burgess guides us through the amazing achievements of Russia's spaceflight program through to the present day, introducing the men and women who have flown the missions that drive us to delve ever deeper into the wonders and complexities of the cosmos.

• Hardcover: ‎240 pages
  
• Reaktion Books (August 8, 2022)
  
• ISBN-10: ‎1789146321
  
• ISBN-13: ‎978-1789146325

posted 07-26-2022 06:35 PM               

Soviets in Space: The People of the USSR and the Race to the Moon
by Colin Turbett

The victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, in which the Soviet Union played both the greatest part and suffered the greatest losses, found the country in a state of devastation. Military strength could not compensate for the damage wreaked by war, especially in the western areas of the USSR.

Within just over ten years, not only was Stalin dead and the relative freedoms of the Khrushchev 'Thaw' in progress, but the Soviet Union was ahead in the Space Race – beating the enormous wealth and resources of the USA, launching Soviet citizens from ordinary backgrounds quite literally into worlds beyond our own. The communist dream seemed alive and well.

The story of those years has rarely been told from a Soviet perspective: Cold War journalism and historical accounts written in the West tend to portray the space race in terms of ideological competition - with success and failure mirroring power and influence in a world divided between capitalism and communism. Whilst the military on both sides certainly benefited from the cutting edge technological advance of the space programs, for the people of the USSR the prestige of their successes offered proof that 'real existing socialism' was moving mankind onto new levels of peaceful progress. Agriculture and railway building initiatives tried to involved ordinary people in other pioneering projects to build socialism before the dream shattered in the 1980s.

Extensively illustrated with images from the time, this book looks at the years of Soviet space success, their background, the personalities involved, and their impact on the ordinary people of the USSR.

• Hardcover, 232 pages
  
• Pen and Sword History (January 12, 2022)
  
• ISBN-10: ‎1399004867
  
• ISBN-13: ‎978-1399004862