American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race, by Douglas Brinkley

American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race, by Douglas Brinkley (2018), interweaves a biography of the president with the history of American interests in space and of the Apollo moon.  Kennedy’s speech about choosing to go to the moon “because it is hard” is one of his most famous.  His advocacy for the Apollo program in Congress and with the American people certainly got the program funded and underway, even as the budget for NASA expanded and became a matter of controversy. Kennedy was not an advocate in the beginning. When he became its champion, he did so because it would advance his campaign for the presidency.  But for Kennedy the race to the moon also represented an effort to show the world that American democracy was superior to communism, event though in the 1950s and early 60s the Soviets appeared to lead the Americans in the exploration of space.  In contrast to the secretive Russian program, the Apollo program operated in a relatively open manner, and details about the program were regularly shared with the public. 

Kennedy based his advocacy of the space program on the premise that the Soviet Union had considerably more nuclear-tipped missiles than the U.S.  The Soviets were more advanced in rocketry, he argued, and the U. S. had to catch up.  It was a matter not only of national pride but of strengthening the U. S. position in the world. The so-called gap was a myth, a fabrication, as Brinkley convincingly shows. As his presidency moved forward, Kennedy came to embrace the space program as a great adventure, as a scientific effort, a research program, and a transformational step forward in human history. Publicly, Kennedy spoke of the space program as a civilian effort, not a military one, and throughout his short presidency he continually resisted efforts by the Air Force to take control of NASA. Privately, he knew that the benefits of NASA research in rocketry, space, and related fields would benefit the military.

Lyndon Johnson was also a fierce advocate for the space program.  He had his own political motivations, but he also believed in the Apollo program as a scientific project.  His support and lobbying helped secure funding in Congress.  Kennedy took credit for the space program in its early stages, but Johnson deserved credit too.

The book seems extensively researched: Brinkley had previously written books about Kennedy. He relies on interviews with members of the Kennedy administration and the space program, letters, tapes and transcripts, study of Kennedy and NASA archives and the works of other scholars. Still, the entanglement of Kennedy’s biography with the story of the American space program doesn’t entirely succeed.  The account of Kennedy’s life seems fairly basic, and the discussion of the race to the moon lacks much scientific detail. A certain shallowness results. For a detailed biography of Kennedy or history of the moon program, one must look elsewhere.