The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857–1957 (Cambridge Centennial of Flight) - Hardcover

Siddiqi, Asif A.

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9780521897600: The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857–1957 (Cambridge Centennial of Flight)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0521897602 ISBN 13: 9780521897600
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2010

Synopsis

The Red Rockets’ Glare is the first academic study on the birth of the Soviet space program and one of the first social histories of Soviet science. Based on many years of archival research, the book situates the birth of cosmic enthusiasm within the social and cultural upheavals of Russian and Soviet history. Asif A. Siddiqi frames the origins of Sputnik by bridging imagination with engineering – seeing them not as dialectic, discrete, and sequential but as mutable, intertwined, and concurrent. Imagination and engineering not only fed each other but were also co-produced by key actors who maintained a delicate line between secret work on rockets (which interested the military) and public prognostications on the cosmos (which captivated the populace). Sputnik, he argues, was the outcome of both large-scale state imperatives to harness science and technology and populist phenomena that frequently owed little to the whims and needs of the state apparatus.

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About the Author

Asif A. Siddiqi is an Assistant Professor of History at Fordham University. He specializes in the social and cultural history of modern Russia and the history of science and technology. His work has been supported by the American Historical Association, the Smithsonian Institution, the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His prior book, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974 (2000), received a number of awards including a citation by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books ever written on space exploration. He received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University and currently lives in New York.

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Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publication date
2010
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0521897602
ISBN 13 
9780521897600
Binding
Hardcover
Edition number
1
Number of pages
414
Rating
  • 4.30 out of 5 stars
    37 ratings by Goodreads

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9781107639324: The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857–1957 (Cambridge Centennial of Flight)

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  1107639328 ISBN 13:  9781107639324
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2014
Softcover