Red Moon Rising; Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age

New York: Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2007. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated] Rare limited softcover printing issued before publication. Trade paperback. Good/No dust jacket issued. [12], 310, [2] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Rare limited softcover printing issued before publication ["Advance Reader's Edition Not for Sale" stated on front cover]. Substantial amount of ink underlining, comments and other marks. In Red Moon Rising, Matthew Brzezinski recounts the dramatic behind-the-scenes story of the fierce battles on earth that preceded and followed the launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957. He takes us inside the Kremlin, the White House, secret military facilities, deep-cover safe houses, and the halls of Congress to bring to life the Russians and Americans who feared and distrusted their compatriots at least as much as their superpower rivals. Drawing on original interviews and new documentary sources, Brzezinski tells a story rich in the paranoia of the time. The combatants include three U.S. presidents, survivors of the gulag, corporate chieftains, ambitious apparatchiks, rehabilitated Nazis, and a general who won the day by refusing to follow orders. The true story of the birth of the space age has never been told in such dramatic detail, and Red Moon Rising brings it vividly and memorably to life. Brzezinski was born in Canada and is of Polish heritage. He graduated from McGill University in 1991. Brzezinski began working as a journalist in the early 1990s in Warsaw, writing for publications including The New York Times, The Economist, and The Guardian (UK). He was a Wall Street Journal staff reporter in Moscow and Kiev in the late 1990s. Relocating to the US, he became a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, covering counterterrorism in the aftermath of 9/11. His work has also appeared in many other publications including The Washington Post Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and Mother Jones. Matthew Brzezinski is the nephew of former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski is the author of four nonfiction books: His first book, Casino Moscow (Free Press, 2001) is a first-person account of the "Wild East" atmosphere prevailing in Russia in the 1990s. Brzezinski's second book, Fortress America (Bantam, 2004) addresses the new technology, laws, tactics, and persistent vulnerabilities of the post-9/11 era. Matthew Brzezinski's third book, Red Moon Rising (Holt, 2007) is a work of narrative nonfiction that tells the story of the race to space culminating in the Sputnik launch by the USSR on October 4, 1957, drawing on previously classified Soviet documents. Red Moon Rising is now in development to become a miniseries. Matthew Brzezinski's fourth book, Isaac's Army (Random House, 2012) is set in World War II. A work of narrative nonfiction, Isaac's Army tells the story of a group of young Polish Jews and the Polish Jewish underground, from its earliest acts of defiance in 1939 to the survivors' exodus to Palestine in 1946. The book draws on interviews with surviving Resistance members and unpublished memoirs, as well as Polish-language sources and established academic works on the subject of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. "Isaac's Army" was named as a 2012 finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards.