A Fire on the Moon

'White as the shrine of the Madonna in half the churches of the world, this slim angelic mysterious ship of stages rose without sound out of its incarnation of flame.' For one extraordinary week in the summer of 1969 the world watched as three men travelled a quarter of a million miles away from Earth to land on the moon. A Fire on the Moon, written as events unfolded, is Mailer's matchless account of the Apollo 11 mission: the psychology of the astronauts, the launch of their rocket in a burst of white flame, the families left behind, and Mailer's anxieties and terrors about the enormity of what they were doing. It is also a portrait of America, torn apart by riots and the war in Vietnam, trying to conquer new worlds in order to escape itself. With an Introduction by Geoff Dyer 'A wild and dazzling book.' The New York Times