With no control and no means of escape, this made the first 122 seconds of flight the most dangerous part of any mission aboard the shuttle.

There is something so monumentally heartbreaking about the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Even though it happened many years ago, the grief surrounding it still lingers. Seven bright souls, who gave so much to be on the front lines of science and space, had their lives extinguished in a moment's eye.

Going into this book, my technical knowledge around the explosion was fairly scant—I knew there was a malfunction in an O-ring, a cheap piece of rubber meant to seal something vital in the solid rocket booster. But as it turns out, that was just part of the story, and maybe not even the most important part.

When you look at an undertaking like the Space Shuttle program, it's not an exaggeration to say that it's unbelievably complex, not just technically, but also the sheer scope of the project, the timeline, the numerous moving parts, and all the people involved—the engineers, the managers, and of course, the astronauts. Adam Higginbotham took this intricate, convoluted, often perplexing pile of information, and carefully and methodically broke it down, bringing this tragedy and its entire series of precipitating events to clarity.

This is narrative nonfiction at its best. Such a topic is not easy to tackle without it turning dry, but it never does so in the author's capable hands. Though this is as comprehensive as you can get, every page, every chapter, every moment of this story felt riveting. In fact, if you asked me, this was as exciting and thrilling and ultimately horrifying as the best of its counterparts in fiction, and the fact that it really happened only adds to the appeal.

One thing the book highlights is that when it comes to catastrophic failures like this, it is never just a one-time thing. It is often a series of mistakes, any one of which if examined and taken seriously and mitigated, would have likely led to a very different outcome. But instead, each mistake and the warning it carried of impending doom was allowed to stand, incorrectly assessed as safe and acceptable, until we reached the point of no return.

The hubris of NASA and Morton Thiokol laid down in these pages was hard to take. The managers at these two organizations viewed each lucky escape (and there were many of them when it came to the O-rings) as yet another sign of their wisdom in pushing ahead with the missions, instead of what it actually was, which is a harbinger of larger problems to come. We obviously know what is going to happen and they do not, yet we must follow along as they blunder and congratulate themselves, all the while inching closer and closer to disaster.

The mechanical tolerances between each segment of the rocket were so tight that the smallest contaminant caught between the O-ring and the metal faces of the joint—a fleck of lint, a single human hair—could cause a leak.

But it is not all hopeless. Even in this toxic environment, there were engineers who did the right thing. They spoke up and went against their colleagues and management, they worked hard to find solutions to the O-ring problems, and when the crucial moment came, they sounded the alarm and did all they could to try to call off the launch. I am glad, at least in these pages, that they are given the recognition they deserve.

Maybe the biggest thing that stands out to me here is that this tragedy felt inevitable. If not this instance, then it would've happened to a different shuttle and a different mission and a different crew somewhere down the line. Because the underlying issue wasn't technical, it was human. The insidious attitudes of the people calling the shots, the callous disregard for safety, the complete and utter breakdown in communications, those are all things that are hard to fix, even after the O-rings no longer pose a problem.

The book closes out on a note of hope but also a warning. The Space Shuttle program after the Challenger explosion proceeded safely for 17 years, before Columbia blew up on reentry in 2003, yet again plagued by the same sort of miscommunication, complacency, and management brushoffs that brought down its sister ship so many years prior. The point of history is so we don't have to repeat the same mistakes again, yet we do.

And so as we look towards a new era of space exploration with Artemis and beyond, the crux of this book and its cautionary tale within remains—have we really learned our lesson?

"The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!

Mercury brought us into the skies, Apollo took us to the Moon. But what about Gemini, the important but often overlooked middle child? Hardly anyone remembers the achievements and dangers of its two-year, twelve-mission program that paved the way for all that followed. Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon hopes to right that wrong.

Immediately from the prologue, this book had me hooked. We open onto the spacewalk of Gemini 9 which had come perilously close to fatal. From there, we step back in time to the beginning of NASA and to President Kennedy's pledge to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. It was a gutsy and ambitious pledge, but once made, NASA took it as a promise and proceeded to run with it.

This book covers every Mercury and every Gemini mission, and it's fascinating stuff. Every crewed outing (six for Mercury, ten for Gemini) carried enormous risks for the astronauts and contained objectives that must be met in order to move the program closer to its boots-on-the-Moon promise. And in almost every single mission, something went wrong. The combination of quick thinking, ingenuity, and plain luck that kept everyone safe made for a thrilling tale.

Kluger's a terrific writer. His style is very zippy and engaging, so it pairs well with nonfiction, really bringing history to life and keeping the reader riveted. He's faithful to the technical stuff, but he also understands that this story isn't just about that. The human parts are just as important, and he is able to bring to life all the key players and every astronaut that made the Gemini achievements possible.

Kluger also has an eye towards humor, and when you have bureaucracy, posturing on the national and international stage, and good old human folly all mixed in together, there is sure to be some unintended funny moments. The space race with Russia was particularly predisposed to being droll, even if inadvertently so, and Kluger's take on it added a lot of zing to the whole thing.

When it comes to nonfiction, one of the most important factors is whether there is enough content to fill out a book, and that's a resounding yes over here. In fact, it's quite a task to distill a dozen missions and the history leading up to them down to just 300 pages, so Kluger is able to pick and choose the most interesting bits, and as a result, every page of this book comes across with urgency and insight.

What an exhilarating read, especially at this moment in history when the Artemis program looks to be on the verge of bringing us to the lunar surface once more. What is old shall be new again, and so we're right back on the stepping stones to the Moon.

If you're a space buff like me, or just a nonfiction fan in general, I don't think you'll regret picking this up and learning all about Gemini, And in case you're wondering, the correct pronunciation is "gem-min-ee" according to NASA.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!

This is not planet Earth as we found it. This is a new place—a fire planet we have made.

A detailed investigation into all that transpired during the record-breaking Fort McMurray Fire, in which almost 100,000 people were forced to flee in a single afternoon, as well as a historical and scientific exploration of how we got to this point and where we will go from here, Fire Weather is as essential as it is eye-opening.

Going into this, I'd like to think I was fairly well-versed on current events, especially on anything weather-related. And of course I knew about global warming and climate change; I don't live under a rock, after all. But when it came to grasping the nitty gritty of exactly what all that entails, I admit I was a little bit hazy.

So this book is exactly what I needed to become crystal clear on this topic. It sits right at the intersection of current affairs, science, and history, all topics that interest me about our world. And I found it to be an absolutely engrossing read, one that as it went on, became harder and harder for me to put down.

We start off with a brief look into the history of fossil fuels, as well as how Fort McMurray became a petroleum boom town surrounded by boreal forest. Then the book shifts into a deep dive of the Fort McMurray Fire, and let me tell you, it is as harrowing and thrilling of a tale as any I've ever read. The mechanics of this fire were almost heretofore unseen, its destructive properties so vast and ferocious, it spawned its own weather systems and was not truly extinguished for more than a year.

The city and the surrounding landscape had become something akin to a fire planet—not a biome but a “pyrome” whose purpose was not to support life but to enable combustion.

But the irony is that Fort McMurray would not have existed as a city if not for its industry of extracting and producing fossil fuels. And while it's this industry that had made it into a boom town, it also simultaneously helped to shape the climate into one that supported and sustained the fire that eventually razed the city to the ground.

But the author doesn't just stop at reporting on the fire. He takes that event and ties it to history and science, and shows us the future in store for us if we choose to continue our destructive love affair with fossil fuels. The amount of research that went into this book must have been staggering, as is the author's vision and ability to tie it all together into a cohesive narrative that both informs and astounds.

Reading this book often left me in chills. Vaillant has a way with words that is not only illuminating in the way of nonfiction, but also evocative and emotionally resonant in the way that only the best of fiction can achieve. And the result is nothing short of remarkable and sobering.

It is almost unbearable to consider that our reckoning with industrial CO2 is only in its infancy, and that future generations will bear this burden far more heavily than we do now.

The juxtaposition of the details of a wildfire side-by-side with a study of climate change is a masterful stroke, as is the choice to go with the Fort McMurray Fire in particular. This combination, which examines climate change from both the micro and macro levels, really hits home the symbiotic relationship humankind has developed with fossil fuels and underscores the positive feedback loop we have created, through negligence at best and willful greed at worst, that is currently propelling us towards a future none of us want to see.

The message isn't all negative though. Yes, we are past the point of no return and our planet will never go back to the way it was before, but our total annihilation isn't a foregone conclusion yet. There is still hope, if we can only make the hard choices now and pivot in time. And so this book, more than anything, is a warning and a call to action.

The current moment is the greatest challenge humanity has faced since we (almost) mastered fire. This time, it is not fire we have to master, but ourselves. If we fail this test, there will be another one, and another after that, but each time the stakes will be higher and the price of failure steeper.

Every once a while, I come across a nonfiction read so profound, so staggering in its scope and so clear in its view, I feel like I'm walking away with essential knowledge of the world. And so this book does exactly that. It is timely, insightful, and surely a must-read as we approach yet another hottest year of yet another hottest decade on record.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!

I'm always excited to learn a little bit more about the universe. And while This Way to the Universe does do that for the parts I understood, I feel like a lot of it went over my head.

The book takes us on a journey through the highlights of all that science has discovered and yet to discover about the universe, from its origin all the way to now and where it might go from here. It's a fairly technical journey, bound in theoretical physics and math, and my understanding of the book definitely reflects that.

For me, where this book works best is that it tries to tie all the information together into a cohesive narrative. It was satisfying to walk through the history of scientific progress and to check in at its pivotal moments. Along the way, Dine pays homage to many scientists, including women and those from non-Western countries whose impact may be lesser known to the world.

However, the book lost me for a big chunk in the middle once it started going into subatomic territory with mesons, pions, gluons, and symmetry, to name a few. There's just not enough depth here. The book tries to tackle these fairly complicated topics without the necessary background or details. So if you don't already know the topics covered, it would be hard for you to glean anything from what's in the pages.

It's not entirely the author's fault. I can see that he didn't want to get mired in the technical details in a 300-page book. Otherwise, it would soon resemble a textbook. But without any technical explanation, it's just impossible for me to make heads or tails out of the whole thing. It almost feels like this should be a companion to a graduate-level course rather than a standalone book for the layman.

Too bad. The topics in here are fascinating and the parts I could understand worthwhile. But I just can't rate it higher than 3 stars when I didn't understand half the book.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

These days, nothing get our collective attention quite like an epidemic, and Ebola is about as terrifying as they come. Not only are the symptoms gruesome, but the way it propagates via touch as people care for their sick loved ones sounds like something straight out of dystopian sci-fi.

In Crisis in the Red Zone, we follow the horrific 2013-2014 Ebola epidemic that engulfed Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia and eventually went on to infect almost 30,000 people. The book focuses on the Makona Triangle, where the virus first grabbed hold and exploded, and also on Kenema Government Hospital as it quickly became overwhelmed as the only hospital in Sierra Leone with a functional infectious disease unit that could handle Ebola.

What's so riveting about this book is that the virus's effects on humans and its vicious propagation methods are more horrifying than any fictional epidemic/pandemic book I've ever read. During the initial outbreak, the international community did not take this very seriously, and so very little aid arrived. These three relatively poor countries had fragile medical infrastructures which quickly reached their limit and became swamped by the deluge of sick people.

It's one thing to understand a catastrophe from the macro level, another altogether to see it from up close. And that's what Richard Preston aims to achieve with this book. He takes a disaster happening far away and brings humanity to it by telling the story through the eyes of the people on the ground—the doctors, nurses, and scientists fighting on the front lines. Their courage is awe inspiring and their terror is visceral as they battle against this virus that's spreading faster than they can contain it and could possibly kill them in the process.

The book delves into the epidemiological roots of the virus, its current mutations, and where it can go from here if we are not careful. It also explores the ethical implications around who to treat if there are limited resources available or if the only potential medicine is unproven and untested against humans.

I found this whole read to be captivating and informative. It's as gripping as a thriller, but more real and horrifying because it isn't fiction. It's easy to feel a sense of distance when something bad is happening on the other side of the world, to feel as if it could never touch us. So to read this book is to understand the minds and emotions of the medical professionals battling Ebola and to see their fight come alive. These people are the real heroes, and I'm glad their story is being told.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!