Books: After Sputnik
After Sputnik: 50 Years of the Space Age is a fantastic book, showcasing not only space artifacts but some of the items influenced by the space age as well. I can’t wait to purchase it, and many a future Themes article seed is nestled in the pages!
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first human-made object to orbit the Earth. This single act jump-started a new era in history—a broad effort to explore, learn about, survive in, utilize, and fully understand the implications of humanity’s first steps beyond Earth. As much as any other twentieth-century undertaking, the achievement of sending humans and machines into space has transformed and shaped the way we live. From Sputnik to today, from heroic first journeys to the everyday application of space technologies, spaceflight has cut a broad swath through the contemporary experience.
As time marches closer to the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch, I expect we’ll see more books of this basic theme popping up.
