Dark Side of the Moon

[Dave Monroe]

Biddle, Wayne.  Dark Side of the Moon:
   Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race.
   New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009.

A stunning investigation of the roots of the first moon landing forty years ago.

This illuminating story of the dawn of the space age reaches back to
the reactionary modernism of the Third Reich, using the life of
“rocket scientist” Wernher von Braun as its narrative path through the
crumbling of Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazi regime. Von
Braun, a blinkered opportunist who could apply only tunnel vision to
his meteoric career, stands as an archetype of myriad twentieth
century technologists who thrived under regimes of military secrecy
and unlimited money. His seamless transformation from developer of the
deadly V-2 ballistic missile for Hitler to an American celebrity as
the supposed genius behind the golden years of the U.S. space program
in the 1950s and 1960s raises haunting questions about the culture of
the Cold War, the shared values of technology in totalitarian and
democratic societies, and the imperatives of material progress.

http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=5717

WHY I BELIEVE IN IMMORTALITY
BY WERNHER VON BRAUN
Inventor and Space Expert

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/gr/vonbraun.html
http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/extra/von-braun.html