Although their door-stopper size might be intimidating, Asif Siddiqi's Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge and The Soviet Space Race with Apollo are two of the most comprehensive books on the Soviet space program. Siddiqi is a very clear reader and his books have the benefit of not trying to frame the Soviet space program in terms of a tit-for-tat space race (i.e. Soviets do X, Americans do Y) that is more common in popular accounts of the space program. Such a narrative does not always fit in the Soviet space program, where internal rivalries among Soviet bureaucracies were sometimes as important (or more) than its rivalry with the West. there is also the oral history edited by Slava Gerovitch,Voices of the Soviet Space Program: Cosmonauts, Soldiers, and Engineers Who Took the USSR into Space, that also gives a more intimate account of the Soviet programs.