You didn’t hear James Michener’s name spoken among literary sorts without a sneer attached. But now that we are older, wiser, and don’t give a damn what our professors or literary betters think, I believe you’ll discover a hell of a writer in Michener, well worth reading even if his memory does seem to be fading from the culture.īack when I was in college, Michener was at the top of the publishing mountain - and at the bottom of his reputation among the smart set. You, like me, may have been put off from reading Michener before by bad advice. It’s odd, but not having to either buy reprint editions or crack open dusty and crumbling paperbacks made reading Michener seem new to me, as if I were encountering contemporary books instead of novels that are thirty to forty years old.

I spent many pleasurable hours listening to the audiobook versions of the books when I wasn’t reading words on a page. In the process, I discovered an American master I never suspected existed. “Michener is eloquent in describing the actual flights into space, as well as the blazing, apocalyptic re-entry of the shuttle into earth’s atmosphere.I spent an entire year reading through the novels of James Michener, especially the “saga” novels of the 1970s and 80s. Without question, the space program’s dramatic dimensions provide the stuff of great fiction.” - BusinessWeek “ Space is everything that Michener fans have come to expect. a sympathetic, historically sound treatment of an important human endeavor that someday could be the stuff of myth, told here with gripping effect.” - The New York Times Book Review Space is one of his best books.” - The Wall Street Journal Michener, by any standards, is a phenomenon. senator who takes his personal battle not only to a nation, but to the heavens Dieter Kolff, a German rocket scientist who once worked for the Nazis Randy Claggett, the astronaut who meets his destiny on a mission to the far side of the moon and Cynthia Rhee, the reporter whose determined crusade brings their story to a breathless world.

This astounding novel brings to life the dreams and daring of countless men and women-people like Stanley Mott, the engineer whose irrepressible drive for knowledge places him at the center of the American exploration effort Norman Grant, the war hero and U.S. Michener tackles the most ambitious subject of his career: space, the last great frontier. Already a renowned chronicler of the epic events of world history, James A.

Michener space