Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 629.450092
EAN num: 9780609610015
ISBN number: 0609610015
Label: Crown
Manufacturer: Crown
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 464
Printing Date: March 23, 2004
Publishing house: Crown
Release Date: March 23, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 460481
Studio: Crown
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Product Description:
lan Shepard was the brashest, cockiest, and most flamboyant of America’s original Mercury Seven, but he was also regarded as the best. Intense, colorful, and dramatic—the man who hit a golf ball on the moon—he was among the most private of America’s public figures and, until his death in 1998, he guarded the story of his life zealously.
Light This Candle, based on Neal Thompson’s exclusive acess to private papers and interviews with Shepard’s family and closest friends—including John Glenn, Wally Schirra, and Gordon Cooper—offers a riveting, action-packed account of Shepard’s life. Among the very first men to fly off aircraft carriers, he was one of the most fearless test pilots. He endured long separations from his devoted wife and three daughters to fly dangerous missions, working his way up the ranks despite clashes with authority over his brazen flying maneuvers and penchant for risky pranks. Hugely competitive, he beat out John Glenn for the very first Mercury spaceflight and then overcame a rare illness to return to space again on Apollo 14.
He took every challenge head-on and seemed to win every time.
Long overdue, Light This Candle is a candid and inspiring account of a bold American life.
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Rated by buyers 
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Not much about Al Shepard that isn't already in other books
and movies. And just plain wrong on obvious things like
Grissom's pickup --which is on tape. How do you screw
something like that up? Short on technical details
and a lot of rehash on the Glen rivalry.
The constant repetitive mentioning of Al's sexual business is a bit weird.
Especially since only two real instances are mentioned in the book,
and neither of them involved sex. The supposed suppressed T.J. scandal
(John Glenn saves the day) is total horsecrap too, never happened.
Rated by buyers 
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Surprise of surprises. Amid the clutter of hastily-written self-serving memoirs from the early days of the space program, finally there appears something akin to solid history and literary proficiency. Neal Thompson was a Baltimore reporter when Alan Shepard died in 1998 of leukemia. Assigned to write an obituary, Thompson discovered that no very first rate biography of the United State's very first spaceman was then in print. Sensing an opportunity, Thompson, a free lance writer, began a six-year research project and produced a highly respectable treatment of a very private man. What had been known about Shepard were primarily his great successes and his notable shortcomings. Johnson tackles the great middle--and the puzzle that was Alan Shepard now begins to make sense.
In truth, there is probably misunderstanding about all of the early astronaut heroes, as if each was assigned a role in a bigger cosmic drama. Scotty Carpenter will always be the house philosopher, Gordo Cooper the hotdog, Gus Grissom the curmudgeon. Shepard's role was to be first, the best, the winner of a grueling marathon to ride the Redstone rocket--tiny by today's standards--for fifteen minutes on May 5, 1961. Given the unpredictability of the rockets of that era, the greater risk to the astronaut was on the ground than in space. This fact was appreciated in 1961, and being chosen number one was a statement from his superiors about his fortitude as much as his mastery of flying and technology.
Alan Shepard was born in 1923 in Derry, NH, to a somewhat removed, demanding father. Young Shepard inherited a fierce competitiveness and an independence that allowed him to pursue personal goals with little concern about his impression on others. This latter quality, to his advantage, is what set him apart from his archrival John Glenn, who did worry about public relations. Shepard was one of those rare men who had his cake and ate it, too: he achieved remarkable career goals while entertaining himself along the way with what can only be called oppositional defiance. In a strange twist of history, he actually pulled off the mischief that has always been attached to others like Gordon Cooper.
In this regard Thompson studies Shepard's military misbehavior and his philandering. The author's account of the future astronaut's brushes with military authority is detailed and rather surprising. One comes away with a sense that the New Hampshire flyboy's skills as a naval test pilot must have been noteworthy, outweighing numerous dangerous incidents of "flat-hatting" or strafing civilians on the ground. His cheating on his virtuous and devoted wife Louise--a spouse of the Lady Bird Johnson mold--is a blotch that time will probably not erase. Thompson does observe that Shepard's amorous sorties off the reservation were adolescent in nature; the astronaut apparently never engaged in any sort of long term relationship in which Louise was displaced.
Although there is in this work a lot about Shepard to dislike, the author clearly strove for a balanced presentation. Shepard appears to have made his peace with Glenn at the time of the Freedom Seven flight. After retirement he demonstrated a better than average interest in philanthropy and seems to have worked harder in his later years to enrich his marriage with Louise. Perhaps best known is his decade long battle with Meniere's Disease, and later with a form of leukemia. In some ways the Meniere's was more of a psychological jolt, coming as it did at the beginning of the Gemini, and ultimately, the Apollo Programs. Whatever his colleagues felt about him, Shepard was widely respected in the NASA management circle for outstanding cape com work in the troubled Carpenter and Cooper flights. With Glenn, his chief rival, out of the picture due to a head injury and political considerations, Shepard was the logical choice to command the maiden voyages of these new craft--and by implication become the very first man to walk on the moon.
But this was not to be. For nearly a decade Shepard lost his license to fly any type of aircraft due to balance impairment [and other less known medical problems brought to light by the author.] Did he take this forced grounding graciously? Admittedly not. But the author assesses this period of Shepard's career with more depth than other commentators. He notes, for example, that Shepard had burned his bridges with the Navy by joining NASA and could not return to what seemed to be a straight road to admiralty status. While the Navy was no longer an option, Shepard was proving himself to be a better than average business man and becoming independently wealthy. Freed of aviator-astronaut responsibilities, he could have lived a highly lucrative lifestyle.
But he stayed with NASA, a nasty Don Quixote. Only a man in similar straits like Deke Slayton, himself medically grounded from space travel, could have understood and tolerated ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
I am a "space nut". I have read numerous books, seen numerous vhs and dvd stories of everything from the start of the space age to the shuttle flights. I have never had a more inspiring feeling than upon finishing "Light this candle". It started a little slow with all the early life details of Shepard but, helped later in the book with how & why he reacted to many (and I mean many) tough situations that he faced in his unbelievable life. Being a space nut, I was happy to see little details explained in the book that are lacking in other books I have read. Such things as Shepard talking about laying in the LEM following an EVA on Apollo 14. He and Mitchell were supposed to be sleeping but Shepard talked about the "eerie silence" and hearing the A/C unit click on and off. Also, feeling like they were going to tilt over and falling out of the bunk when he thought the LEM was sliding down the edge of the crater. All of these things made it a "tough to put down" book that I would HIGHLY recommend.
I used to think of Al Shepard as an egotistical, bi-polar, spoiled fly-boy that I wanted no part in learning more about. I would have rather stuck to anyone of the other 6 Mercury astronauts. BOY WAS I WRONG! This book might have turned me to thinking that Al Shepard is the most interesting of the original 7.
Rated by buyers 
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I had been meaning to read this long-overdue biography of Alan Shepard, and I happened to pick it up in a cruise ship library. As I read it I was surprised at the number of factual inaccuracies--there is at least one glaring non-technical error per chapter, which calls into question almost everything else between the covers. Numerous reviews here mention more problems with technical aspects of the book that I was unaware of, but which do not surprise me given the apparent lack of proofreading and fact-checking.
An example: upon finding the book, I leafed through it and found the section on Apollo 14. There it mentioned that John Glenn had "almost killed himself when he lost control of the pace car at the Daytona 500 and slammed into a flatbed trailer crowded with journalists." This sentence boggled my mind, for it contained two errors: the pace car was at the Indianapolis 500, and John Glenn was a passenger while a local Dodge dealership owner was the driver. The book is just full of examples of this kind of sloppy reporting.
Edit: I see that at least the paperback edition correctly says Indianapolis 500, but it still incorrectly implies that Glenn was driving the pace car.
Rated by buyers -
I missed an opportunity to go to a book-signing where Alan Shepard was signing copies of "Moon Shot". I figured I would have another chance but then before long he was gone. What a thrill it would have been to have shook the hand of the very first American in space.
Nostalgia aside, this book is a capsule of the life of the man. True, it is littered with inaccuracies in spots, and seems to delve far too deeply at moments on the personal life of one of the most important men in the last 50 years. But then again, how many JFK biographers have tried to delve into the hush-hush side of the man?
This book will give you a clear picture of the over-achieving, success-driven, consumate test pilot who one day became an important symbol to many Americans, who were afraid their world was about to be consumed by communism. At times wistful, sometimes aggrandizing, other times pointedly candid, this biography endeavor to reveal the Alan Shepard even the man himself wanted no one to see.
You will be amazed at the story.
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