When Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July 1969 it capped not only the most remarkable
engineering feat in history but also a decade-long battle over how much access the press and
public should have to the manned space program. Now forty years after an awed world watched
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bounce across the surface of the moon this book tells the
behind-the-scenes story of how NASA and the U.S. media were often at odds but ultimately
showed extraordinary cooperation in bringing the story of lunar conquest to the world. Drawing
upon rich historical sources from NASA journalists and television networks this book sheds
new light on how media shaped how we saw America's great adventure in space and raises
contemporary questions about the role of information in a free society.
