Starman: the Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin Free

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Account Options Sign in. Top charts. New arrivals. On April 12,Yuri Gagarin became the first person in history to leave the Earth's atmosphere and venture into space. His flight aboard a Russian Vostok rocket lasted only minutes, but at the end of it he had become the most famous man in the world. Back on the ground, his smiling face captured the hearts of millions around the globe. Film stars, politicians and pop stars from Europe to Japan, India to the United States vied with each other to shake his hand. Despite this immense fame, almost nothing is known about Gagarin or the exceptional people behind his dramatic space flight. Starman tells for the first time Gagarin's personal odyssey from peasant to international icon, his subsequent decline as his personal life began to disintegrate under the pressures of fame, and his final disillusionment with the Russian state. President Kennedy's quest to put an American on the Moon was a direct reaction to Gagarin's Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin before that successful moonshot occurred, Gagarin himself was dead, aged just thirty-four, killed in a mysterious air crash. Publicly the Soviet hierarchy mourned; privately their sighs of relief were almost audible, and the Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin report into his death remains secret. Entwined with Gagarin's history is that of the breathtaking and highly secretive Russian space program - its technological daring, its triumphs and disasters. In a gripping account, Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony reveal the astonishing world behind the scenes of the first great space spectacular, and how Gagarin's flight came frighteningly close to destruction. He also lectures and organizes exhibitions on space-related subjects. Jamie Doran of Atlantic Celtic Films is an international award-winning documentary producer. After seven years at BBC Television, he went into independent production, where many of his films have concentrated on lifting the lid of secrecy within the former Soviet Union. Reviews Review Policy. Published on. Flowing text, Original pages. Best for. Web, Tablet, Phone, eReader. Content Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin. Read aloud. Flag as inappropriate. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are. Please follow the detailed Help center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders. Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin - Piers Bizony, Jamie Doran - Google книги

This engrossing study, published in in the UK after Doran's BBC documentary of the same name, finally comes to the States, with an afterword to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first Piers BizonyJamie Doran. On April 12,Yuri Gagarin became the first person in history to leave the Earth's atmosphere and venture into space. His flight Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin a Russian Vostok rocket lasted only minutes, but at the end of it he had become the most famous man in the world. Back on the ground, his smiling face captured the hearts of millions around the globe. Film stars, politicians and pop stars from Europe to Japan, India to the United States vied with each other to shake his hand. Despite this immense fame, almost nothing is known about Gagarin or the exceptional people behind his dramatic space flight. Starman tells for the first time Gagarin's personal odyssey from peasant to international icon, his subsequent decline as his personal life began to disintegrate under the pressures of fame, and his Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin disillusionment with the Russian state. President Kennedy's quest to put an American on the Moon was a direct reaction to Gagarin's achievement--yet before that successful moonshot occurred, Gagarin himself was dead, aged just thirty-four, killed in a mysterious air crash. Publicly the Soviet hierarchy mourned; privately their sighs of relief were almost audible, and the KGB report into his death remains secret. Entwined with Gagarin's history is that of the breathtaking and highly secretive Russian space program - its technological daring, its triumphs and disasters. In a gripping account, Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony reveal the astonishing world behind the scenes of the first great space spectacular, and how Gagarin's flight came frighteningly close to destruction. He also lectures and organizes exhibitions on space-related subjects. Jamie Doran of Atlantic Celtic Films is an international award-winning documentary producer. After seven years at BBC Television, he went into independent production, where many of his films have concentrated on lifting the lid of secrecy within the former Soviet Union. Book Review: Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin|National Space Society

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Starman by Jamie Doran. Piers Bizony. Yuri Gagarin is one of the great heroes of the twentieth century, but the details of his life and the Russian space effort have been shrouded in secrecy: even the names of the engineers who worked with Gagarin were a mystery to the West for many years. Starman is the first book to tell the compelling story behind Gagarin's life and his audacious first flight into space aboa Yuri Gagarin is one of the great heroes of the twentieth century, but the details of his life and the Russian space effort have been shrouded in secrecy: even the names of the engineers who worked with Gagarin were a mystery to the West for many years. Starman is the first book to tell the compelling story behind Gagarin's life and his audacious first flight into space aboard a converted nuclear weapon. He was once the most famous man in the world yet in his life, as in death, he was a man the world knew almost nothing about. Get A Copy. Unknown Bindingpages. More Details Original Title. Yuri Gagarin. Other Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Starmanplease sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. I was quite dubious about this book at the beginning. He Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin up in an area that was occupied by the Nazis from — he was seven years old when they arrived. Low level stuff, but enough to have got any Russ I was quite dubious about this book at the beginning. Low level stuff, but enough to have got any Russian child shot if they had been caught. The stories might be true but to me they had the feel of Soviet mythologizing. However the book really picks up when it moves onto the early Soviet space programme. This led to some disastrous accidents and to near misses affecting the first two Soviet flights, made by Gagarin and by Gherman Titov. To some extent the same Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin affected the early American space programme. This section of the book is probably as much about the space race itself as about Gagarin, but it does have an interesting angle in respect of the rivalry between Gagarin and Titov over who was to be the first cosmonaut. The decision was only made the day before the launch. Titov contributed interviews for the book and is quite gracious about Gagarin, but you sense that he never quite got over the disappointment. After the first flight, he wanted to go back into space, or at least continue as an air force pilot, but Khrushchev considered him too valuable to risk, keeping him well and truly grounded. On top of everything the Soviet space programme itself started to run into trouble as the s progressed, since the country could not compete with the resources the US government poured into the Apollo missions. Initially flushed with success and later frustrated by being sidelined, Gagarin turned to parties, drinking sessions, and adulterous one-night stands. Some bizarre incidents are described! The author is as sympathetic as he can be. View all 20 comments. Reposting this review in belated celebration of humanity's wildest dream. Number One. The First Man in Space. The first human in space, the first one to see our planet as "a tiny blue ball drifting through the infinite cosmic darkness. Even in that rare existential moment of childhood, I was scared and humbled. How must it have felt, then, for Gagarin to be the first one to escape the confines of our atmosphere, the first one to see Earth from space? He was the first one to experience something larger than life, something that until then humanity only dared to dream about. He was the first to do it, in a tiny Vostok space capsule, on April 12, They recall with the genuine affection a peasant boy with a winning smile, who stunned the entire world with his achievement. Russians don't hesitate to remind us Westerners, "He was the first, you know. As a matter of fact, that was done for decades. It was desirable to present him as what the Party needed him to be - a simple farmboy with a winning smile, who took the Soviet Union to the stars. This book, in a dry journalistic non-yellow-press style tries to give us a more objective portrait of this extraordinary man. It succeeds at that, I think. And the message I get out of it is that Gagarin did not need the Party to construct an image of him as an extraordinary man - he already had all the qualities that made him amazing, no embellishment necessary. He was an ambitious and competitive individual, acutely aware that the central achievement of his Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin was based on the efforts of many others who were not even permitted to reveal their names, let alone share in his public glory. He was a peasant boy at ease with complex engineering equations; a programmed technician who could think for himself; a loyal member of a conformist society who rebelled against the system. He was impetuous, occasionally thoughtless, yet highly disciplined Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin his work and responsible towards others, often at great risk to himself. He knew little of politics, while displaying a remarkable knack for diplomacy, both at home and abroad. He was an adulterer who never really betrayed his wife and family. As all these Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin elements of his life intermingle, the story that emerges is one of an essentially decent and brave man giving his best in extraordinary circumstances. He was a hero, Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin the best and most honest sense of the word. His childhood, marred by living in the occupied territories during the World War II, witnessing near-death of his little brother at the hands of the Nazis. His youth as a steel foundryman apprentice who discovered a passion for flying and joined a pilot school. His selection as a member Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin the select few future Cosmonauts and months and months of grueling physical training and quite merciless medical experiments little was known about the potential dangers of space for human body, and so future cosmonauts were expected to be able to survive everything. His orbiting of Earth - for the first time. The following years of him being the best ambassador that the Soviet Union could have hoped for. His ascent to and fall from grace of the Soviet leadership. His failed attempts to get back into the space program. His last flight from which he did not return. He had to work quite hard at his tasks, practising them repeatedly. Right - Gagarin and Korolev, the man behind the space program in the USSR, who was forced to really stay behind the scenes due to the overwhelming secrecy of those times. And more - besides just a look at this man's amazing life, this book gives us a glimpse of what the Soviet space program was like, of what the other cosmonauts were like, of the people behind the scenes, of the political and power struggles involved. It broadens its scope beyond just Yuri Gagarin, and does an excellent job at conveying the spirit of that time from the vision of hindsight. Superiors never forgive you for something like that. On one side he was the welcome guest of kings, presidents and even the Queen of England, but on the other side he never lost his ties with the ordinary people. I think he began to sense the lower classes' lack of rights, their hardship, and he saw the corruption of the top layers of society. He saw our drunken leaders dancing on the table and behaving badly, and that can't have left his honest soul unwounded. But it is not so. He was loved for who he was - not an icon of the time but a true friend with the personality that made people want to die to save him. I'm not exaggerating - one of his closest friends, a fellow cosmonaut Komarov, chose not to turn down a clearly flawed space mission, the one that ultimately cost him his life, because Yuri had been his back-up and would have forced to undertake the doomed mission had Komarov refused. Yes, Gagarin apparently was a man worth dying for: " As I knew the state of affairs, I asked him, "If you're so convinced you're going to die, then why don't you refuse the mission? That's Yura, and he'll die instead of me. We've got to take care of him. I highly recommend it to the post-Soviet and Western readers alike. And a cheeky quote to end this review: " The West quickly developed an obsession with the Space Race, much to the bemusement of cosmonaut Gherman Titov and his friends. There wasn't a race, because we Russians were already ahead of the entire planet. View all 15 comments. This became perfectly clear--I, as a person raised in the American education system, did not get Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin world history.