The Man Who Ran the Moon: James Webb, JFK, and the Secret History of Project Apollo
Thunder's Mouth/Icon Books: 2006. 256 pp. $24.95, £16.99 1560257512 1840467649 | ISBN: 1-560-25751-2
Webb's background and the purportedly “secret history” revealed in The Man Who Ran the Moon by Piers Bizony have long been well known. An accomplished Democratic operative and former budget director for President Harry Truman, Webb accepted the NASA position after as many as 17 other prospects had turned it down. He ran NASA (not the Moon) like a chief executive, handling the politics of external relations and leaving the technical management of the programme to trusted subordinates. He survived power struggles, budget battles and conflicts with two presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, over maintaining an overall space programme balanced between manned and unmanned activities. And he won the right to distribute some of NASA's money to support socially constructive programmes such as university development. Smart, energetic, gregarious and iconoclastic — his official limousine was a Checker cab — he cut a colourful swath through the bureaucratic maze of Washington.
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