Leaving Orbit

“Only when an era ends do you get to figure out what it means.”  Margaret Lazerus Dean, Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight 69 (2015).

An enjoyable read, covering the end of the shuttle era of American Spaceflight.  I wish this book had been out when I was teaching my Beyond Fiction class, because it would have formed a perfect inclusio with Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff.  MLD has a comfortable competence as a writer and observer, so it is as though the reader is listening to the experiences of a good friend.