I recently discovered I greatly enjoy books about the history of space travel. Any recommendations?

by D33f

Hi all,

As the title implies I'm looking for books about the history of space travel. Two books I have enjoyed are 'Ignition! An informal history of liquid rocket propulsion' by John D. Clark and 'Russia in space' by Anatoly Zak (only read excerpts so far, but it's definitely on the order list)

I'm mostly looking for books about the technical side of things or books about interesting, lesser known aspects of space travel (ignition! fits both these categories)

What I'm not looking for are astronaut biographies or books about the role of the space race in the cold war. It's no problem at all if these elements are featured as long as they're not the main focus.

Finally, I'm an engineer, so I'm mostly looking for books with at least some entertainment value. Either through interesting writing (again, Ignition! is an excellent example) or featuring some pictures/diagrams.

I hope my request isn't too restrictive. If you have any suggestions that you consider must-reads, even if they don't really correspond to what I'm looking for, let me know either way.

Thank you all in advance, and thanks to all the contributors of this lovely sub for all the reading pleasure.

For the Soviet space program, one name to be familiar with is Asif A. Siddiqi. His two works, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge and The Soviet Space Race with Apollo, are comprehensive accounts of the Soviet space program (technically, the two books are split up from an earlier volume, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974). Siddiqi's work features good archival work as well as interviews with key participants, and highlights the degree to which the Soviet space program succeeded at several in spite of the many obstacles put in front of it by a more or less indifferent political leadership and the chronic bureaucratic turf wars that characterized Soviet aerospace. Siddiqi also does focus on the technical components of Soviet space efforts (the books are rather comprehensive), but with a mind to how technical problems often intersected with political ones.