American Moonshot is no giant leap considering Brinkley’s crucial pantheon of award-winning nonfiction titles, but it is a thrilling one.  Something was in the air in the 1960s; or, perhaps, it was the stars that had aligned to rouse some of the most turbulent and revolutionary events the modern world had ever seen. It would be those same stars that two world superpowers would shoot for. The year was 1962, and President John F. Kennedy had just announced his intention to put a man on the moon by the decade’s end. The first commercial jet airliner had begun operation only nine years prior, a revolution that launched the West into the Jet Age. In other words, such a goal alone was astonishing—never mind its ultimate success.  Brinkley recreates the nationalistic fervor surrounding the Space Race in riveting detail with all-new first-hand accounts from the likes of astronaut John Glenn, rocketeer Wernher von Braun, and his own signature insights and knowledge. Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University and author of several NYT bestselling works of nonfiction including The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America and The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast and is editor of two volumes of  Reagan Diaries. He frequently appears on CNN.

Guest Host: John U. Bacon Bacon is a journalist, public speaker, sports writer and commentator, and an educator at the University of Michigan. He is the bestselling author of 13 books including Three and Out, Fourth and Long, Endzone, and his latest book, The Great Halifax Explosion.