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4 comments about Teacher in Space: Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger Legacy.

1. I've read several books on Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger tragedy and bought this book because the reviews described it as focusing on the Teacher in Space program. I am mostly interested in how the program came about, how it was announced and promoted, the application process, the selection process, and the training. The book certainly covers those areas but not in as much depth as I hoped. Much of the book is on the life of McAuliffe which is thoroughly covered in Robert T. Hohler's excellent biography "I Touch the Future..." While just over 100 pages with very wide margins, Burgess' work does offer information as well as a more comprehensive look into certain areas than I've found in other books which makes it definitely worthwhile to anyone interested in McAuliffe, Challenger, and the Teacher in Space program.
   
   Burgess describes the lessons McAuliffe was planning to teach in space better than any book I've read so far. This information is found in the chapter "Learning the Ropes." One of the demonstrations involved a screwdriver to show that, in space, the weightless astronaut would turn instead of the screw unless anchored. As to the programs to send civilians into space, Burgess covers the incomplete plans of choosing a journalist to go into space (Walter Cronkite was one of the forty finalists) more thoroughly than elsewhere. While Hohler's book is a better source on the application and selection process of the Teacher in Space candidates, Burgess offers several color photos of the ten finalists I have not seen anywhere else.
   
   Finally, with a publishing date of 2000, Burgess has the benefit of hindsight that most of the other books on Challenger do not have. He gives a brief update on Christa's husband and back-up Teacher-in-Space, Barbara Morgan. I had always thought programs to send civilians into space of any walks of life died with Challenger, but the Teacher in Space program has continued with Morgan taking the lead. She actually completed astronaut training in 1999 with an expectation that she would enter space as an "educator mission specialist." This book was completed before the Columbia disaster, so Burgess sounded very optimistic about her chances. Although delayed, fortunately, Morgan got the chance to live her dream on the space shuttle Endeavour. The book includes a section of color photos, an interesting chapter on "Space Objects Named for the Seven Challenger Astronauts," and a forward by Christa's mother Grace Corrigan.



2. While much has been written about the engineering and management decisions that lead up to Challenger explosion, the mission, the Challenger crew and the whole Teacher in Space Program have received much less attention. In this book, the author, Colin Burgess, only devotes a few pages to the accident and focuses primarily on the teacher in space program, Christa McAuliffe, her teaching and NASA experiences and of course the aftermath of the accident. Since the book was written well close to fifteen years after the accident, it avoids much of the sadness, anger and the like which dominated many of the early works on this subject. As a result, the author gives us a wonderful book about the life and times of Christa McAuliffe and the Teacher in Space Program. There is also closing chapter on the next Teacher in Space Candidate, Barbara Morgan, who should fly sometime this decade.

   As someone who lives across the street from the Johnson Space Center (JSC), it is quite obvious to me that the author spent a considerable amount of time researching her life and experiences at JSC, since all of the places, buildings, etc., are named correctly (using the names in 1986), located in their proper places and the astronaut training she received is as it should be. In other words, not only are you getting a wonderful well written book, it is also well researched.

   One final thing to add, the book contains 32 pages of color pictures and all royalties from the book go to the Christa McAuliffe Fund.




3. This is not the first book written about Christa McAuliffe- but it may well be considered the last word on her. Many previous books have concentrated on the technical aspects of the Challenger explosion that took her life. Others were written about her as a person, but were written so close to the time of the disaster that it was hard for them to be objective and see her life and achievements in their entirety. With the passage of time, it has been possible to set the Teacher In Space Program and Christa's life in their true historical context, and Colin Burgess has here done an admirable job of doing so. The politically-inspired events that led to a teacher being offered a seat on a spacecraft formerly reserved for those with piloting or science tasks to undertake are outlined by Burgess with objectivity and clarity. But what comes through more than anything from this book is the remarkable strength of personality that McAuliffe had, making her the perfect person for a space flight, and how that strength has meant that, even after her death, her plans for space education have gone ahead. It seems that her mission to educate and inspire people to dream about spaceflight and act on those dreams was fulfilled even though she never made it into space. Burgess, having already authored an important body of spaceflight books, has added a work guaranteed to inspire and motivate anyone.



4. As a friend of Colin's, I normally would disqualify myself from reviewing one of his books but I feel that I had to comment on this book.

   Colin has done a great job of cutting through the usual American sentimentality whenever the Challenger crew are mentioned and has done a great job in telling us about Christa. However, the book is not just about Christa. The ill fated Teacher in Space program is described in detail as is the launch and the short flight of the Challenger shuttle.

   A worthy addition to any space library. Teenagers in particular will like this book.

   Kate

1 comments about How Far Do You Wanna Go?: The Man Who Turned Fifteen Inner City Kids into a Team--A True Story.

1. Inspirational story by a reluctant baseball coach and mentor who helped 16 inner-city kids avoid the streets and succeed in sports and life. Tru Dixon is not perfect but he is honest, caring and willing to give of himself. When you read this book you will feel like doing something good today!

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3 comments about Fleet Walker's Divided Heart: The Life of BaseballÆs First Black Major Leaguer.

1. It will come as a surprise to most baseball enthusiasts, but Jackie Robsinson was not the first African-American to play baseball in a major league. That honor fell to Moses Fleetwood Walker who achieved college baseball stardom while a student at Oberlin College in the 1880s. But Walker was expelled from professional baseball because of the devastating and pervasive racism of the day, including ill treatment by his team mates, his opponents on the field, and Cap anson, a star of the Chicago White Stockings, who drove Walker and the few other African-Americans in the major leagues out of the game, where blacks wanting to play baseball formed the Negro League teams and were excluded from the major league teams until Robinson's barrier breaking inclusion so many years later into the exclusive club that was professional major league baseball. Walker was more than just a gifted baseball player. In addition to being an outstanding athlete, he was also an inventor, a civil rights activist, an author, and an entrepreneur. Born on October 7, 1856 in Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, Walker died on May 11, 1924 in Cleveland, Ohio. "Fleet Walker's Divided Heart" is a superbly written and enthusiastically recommended biography by David W. Zang of a truly remarkable life filled with accomplishment and frustration, triumph and tragedy, and which now has made into an audiobook CD featuring the impressive narrative talents of Andrew L. Barnes.



2. David W. Zang's "Fleet Walker's Divided Heart" is a detailed biography of a talented, tormented, late 19th century catcher: Moses Fleetwood Walker--America's first black major league baseball player. "Fleet" Walker was born in Mt Pleasant, Ohio on Wednesday, October 7, 1857. This simple fact is mentioned on the first page of "Divided Heart." It is from this unassuming birthday that Zang begins his interesting, but confusing, discussion fo Fleet Walker. After mentioning Walker's birth, Zang tries to explain how Walker's life follows the lines of the nursery rhyme: "Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go......" According to Zang, "it might have appeared that [Walker's mother], a midwife, used the nativity as a practicum and elected to give birth across the first four days of the week."(2) Following this, Zang attempts to connect the sixty-nine years of Walker's life to the nursery rhyme by saying " For as sure as he carried a full measure of woe, Fleet Walker was unquestionably fair of face, full of grace, and possessed of an ambition that would banish his dreams to distant places....Walker had overwhelmed the simplistic prophecies of the nursery thyme to such an extent that the possibility of a four-day birthing could not be dismissed out of hand(2)." This is only one of many, needless, airy speculations (as another reviewer called them) that wander from the solid facts of Walker's life. Because of these, the true essence of the man, Fleet Walker, is lost in "Divided Heart." The facts of Walker's life are intereting enough without Zang's meandering commentaries. Throughout the book, Zang points to several beliefs he has about Fleetwood Walker. He believes that Walker had a "divided heart," as he puts it; but he never pointedly explains what he believes this divided heart to be. The reader is left to wonder if the divided heart existed because Walker was considered a mulatto (mixed race of black and white), or if the divided heart existed because Walker wanted to belong to the white race and to the black race, but never fully belonged to either. Sometimes, the "divided heart" seems to belong to the author, who never fully explains why the story of Walker's life should be important to a reader today. After reading, it might be difficult for the reader to understand the importance, too. Walker was, indeed, the first black man to play major league baseball. He played collegiate baseball for Oberlin College in 1881, and for Michigan University in 1882. He also played professionally for the minor league New Castle, Pennsylvania, Neshannocks. When Walker began playing for the Toledo ball club of the Northwester League in 1883, the state was set for him to become the first black major league baseball player. How was this possible? In 1884, the Toledo club joined the American Association. At the time, the American Association was considered a major league. In a brief, but unusually clear way, Zang explains the process: "The American Association had been formed in the winter of 1881 with the avowed intent to become a major league rival to the National League, a status it won with an 1882 agreement meant to keep them from raiding National League rosters(40)." Because of the agreement, Walker became the first black major league baseball player. Due to injuries, Walker lasted only one season with Toledo. He never again played major league baseball, nor did any other black man until Jackie Robinson on April 15, 1947. After the first two chapters, which explain Walker's rise and fall from major league baseball, Zang shows how Walker's life turned into an aimless, but somewhat successful life of entrepreneurship, invention, race theory, and jail time. He played more baseball for some minor league teams, ending his career with the Syracuse Stars in 1889. Afterward, according to Zang, Walker did "temporarily lose the attention that had been his... he would reclaim it in dramatic and unhappy ways." Walker became a mail clerk, a murder defendant, a convicted mail thief, an inventor, an author on the subject of repatriation of blacks to Africa, and an opera house owner. Generally, the state of Ohio is shown to be a hospitable home to a black man in the late 1800's. Zang excels in showing the history of Ohio's Quaker population's rejection of racism, and in showing how Walker thrived in several businesses in different towns in Ohio. The last two chapters show how much affection Zang has for Walker. Zang's details in the end give some needed energy to Walker's story. Zang even explains the cost of the lid for Walker's casket. Unfortunately, Zang's writing does not follow a chronological timeline closely enough to be easily read. For clarity's sake, the reader will turn pages back and forth to put events in some order--a job usually fulfilled by an author. "Fleet Walker's Divided Heart" is a complicated, detailed biography of a complicated, historical figure. Too bad Zang never explains "WHY?"



3. To properly understand the Twentieth Century American civil rights movement, one must understand how and why a similar movement failed during the Reconstruction years following the Civil War. Likewise with baseball history--to properly appreciate Jackie Robinson breaking the major league color line in 1947, one must understand the less salutary 1884 experience of Moses Fleetwood "Fleet" Walker.

   Walker, born of middle class mixed-race parents in Ohio in 1857, attended and played baseball at integrated colleges in the early 1880's. In 1883 he left school to pursue a professional career with the minor league Toledo Blue Stockings. Baseball teams of the era determined whether to employ African Americans on a team-by-team basis, and Walker's presence on Toledo drew only occasional attention from fans and opponents.

   In 1884 the major league American Association absorbed Toledo as an expansion team. Walker, by then an excellent defensive catcher, followed his team into the Association to become the first black major leaguer. Injuries hobbled Walker, however, and eventually cut his season short. The Toledo club folded after the season.

   Walker returned to the minor leagues in 1885, but faced hardening racial prejudice which blocked his return to the majors. In 1889 the minor International League, in which Walker then played, joined the majors in adopting an unwritten, unofficial color line. By then Walker's career was winding down anyway.

   Walker's subsequent life defies easy characterization. He patented four inventions, published a book, and owned a successful opera house--but also struggled with alcohol, served jail time for stealing from the U.S. mails, and stood trial (but won acquittal) for his role in a knife fight.

   Author Zang integrates Walker's varying experiences into the larger mosaic of declining race relations in the America of his era. Indeed, Zang often ventures too far from the facts of Walker's life--interesting enough in their own right--into airy sociological speculation. He perhaps over-emphasizes Walker's mixed-race parentage as bringing about the "divided heart" of his title. His book nonetheless serves as a valuable testimonial to a fascinating and forgotten life.