Neil Armstrong speaks Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has finally allowed an official biography, First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong (Simon and Schuster), written by James R. Hansen. He has always been wary of interviews. But with the release of the new book, he’s reluctantly agreed to talk to the Associated Press. He said that he had never felt comfortable with the celebrity he achieved. “Friends and colleagues, all of a sudden, looked at us, treated us slightly differently than they had months or years before when we were working together,” the Apollo 11 astronaut said, “I never quite understood that. He also said he reluctantly agreed to the book deal. “Many individuals whose opinions I value have urged me to find a way to put my story in print,” Armstrong said. “I concluded a biography would be superior to an autobiography. I believed the author should have access to my recollections and thoughts although he would not be bound to use or accept them.” First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong: On July 20, 1969, a quiet, determined man from Wapakoneta, Ohio, stepped out of his fragile spacecraft and into history. Neil Armstrong – engineer, naval aviator, test pilot, astronaut and devoted family man – became the first man to walk on the moon. This is a powerful, unreleing biography of a man of no particularly spectacular talent yet who stands as a living testimony to everyday grit and determination. Former NASA historian Hansen has achieved something quite remarkable. Like a rich pointillist painting, he has created a magnificent panorama of the second half of the American 20th century by assembling a multitude of luminescent moments in one man’s life. From Armstrong’s birth to a middle-class familiar Ohio to the mind-boggling fame of the Apollo 11 triumph, and later his service on the commission investigating the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster, Hansen details it all. With the recent renewal of interest in manned space travel, this book is a must for astronaut buffs and history readers alike.
