Until Sputnik (a Russian word meaning 'traveling companion of the Earth'), the Eisenhower administration had other things on its mind-namely, whether the Soviet Union was really turning out long-range nuclear missiles 'like sausages,' as Nikita Khrushchev boasted. American democracy was forward looking and righteous, communist collectivism was backward and evil-so why had the Russians beaten us into space with this 184-pound basketball called Sputnik?Īs Dickson recounts in this entertaining, admirably straightforward account of how and why America entered the space race, Sputnik changed the terms of the Cold War, mostly for the better.

That was the year Elvis Presley recorded 'Jailhouse Rock,' Jimmy Hoffa got elected head of the Teamsters, Beaver Cleaver first shuffled his feet on CBS, and the National Guard escorted black students into Central High School in Little Rock. (Oct.Dickson was a freshman at Wesleyan University in 1957 when he saw the first Soviet-made satellite scooting through the night sky at 18,000 miles per hour. Dickson, whose bibliography runs to 19 pages, completely understands the lure and lore of Sputnik and has done a solid job of synthesizing prior books on the subject. Eisenhower gets high marks for his quiet mastery of the situation, pleased that the Soviets were first into space, since that set off a race to improve American education, even as it fueled an outbreak of UFO hysteria. Dickson examines the feuding between the services for control of the space program and candidly exposes the reasons for the lag in American research. American and Soviet troops vied to seize German scientists and hardware. Dickson chronicles the history of rocket research, including Nazi successes during WWII. President Eisenhower remained calm and tried to lead the country through the media-generated crisis, but the Sputnik 'debacle' helped the Democrats in the next election. The Soviet spacecraft panicked Americans, who constantly looked up into the sky, spoke in hushed tones and feared that the satellite presaged an atomic attack. The Soviet Union was propelled into international prominence on October 4, 1957, by becoming the first nation to successfully launch a satellite, beating the American program by several months. Dickson ( The Electronic Battlefield) chronicles in detail the Soviet satellite Sputnik.

Sputnik by Paul Dickson