November 1, 1999
Could there be a more iconic American life than that of astronaut-turned-senator Glenn? The author's reading voice measured, plainspoken, imbued with honest conviction reinforces this sense of salt-of-the-earth patriotism. First, the listener hears of Glenn's halcyon Ohio childhood, how he married his childhood sweetheart and went off to fly for the navy in the World War II. It is only here, with Glenn's intricate technical descriptions of aircraft and heartfelt observations on the beauty of flight, that he comes across as really comfortable with himself. He goes on to tell of his hero days, first as a postwar test pilot, then as a solo astronaut in his famed Mercury capsule, "Friendship Seven." Though he has the grace of modesty in his descriptions, a genuine sense of the exhilaration of these times translates effectively. By contrast, Glenn's summation of his subsequent political career is admirable but unsurprising. It's only when he returns to space aboard a shuttle flight at age 77, and exuberantly radios to earth, "Zero-G, and I feel fine," that a feeling of his true spark returns. Based on the 1999 BDD hardcover.
August 1, 1999
In this biography, which will (not surprisingly) be heavily promoted, Glenn details his exploits on land and in space.
Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
October 1, 1999
"A boy could not have had a more idyllic early childhood than I did," writes Glenn, but his memories of it would have remained private but for the intense interest when he blasted into space again last year. This reprise of his fame induced him to reconsider his disinclination to write a memoir, so here it is. In it, airplanes, combat, wife Annie, and spaceflight crowd out that part of his life spent in politics, a sensible decision because though the former command the public's unadultered admiration, the latter inevitably attracts mixed opinions. But they are connected. The first steps in Glenn's aeronautical career began with his fascination with cars and planes in Ohio. Immensely proud of his father, a World War I veteran, Glenn enlisted in the army air wing after Pearl Harbor. He finagled a transfer to the marines, whose esprit de corps he admired and whose fighter planes, instead of the army's slow transports, he was burning to fly. He got his chance in the Marshall Islands, survived enemy flak, and returned stateside to the itinerant life of the military. Making the uniform his career, Glenn reveals his ambition through description of his assignments. Apparently becoming the Corps' commandant was his goal. He talked his way into flying jet combat in Korea, and these passages, which feature an appearance by the "splendid splinter," Ted Williams, as Glenn's wingman, will be the most thrilling to readers of an aviational bent. In comparison, the account of Project Mercury is flat, technocratic, with little reflection on the mass-media machine that elevated his celebrity over all other astronauts'. Readers will opine on Glenn's politics according to their wont, but nostalgia for his uncomplicated courage and patriotism will create waiting lists for his reminiscences. ((Reviewed October 1, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)
November 1, 1999
Glenn's utterly plainspoken yet thrilling autobiography will put a lump in readers' throats. The astronaut and four-term U.S. senator from Ohio seems to embody the best old-fashioned American values of integrity, personal discipline, love of country, honesty, courage and responsibility. At 37, Glenn was a frustrated navy bureaucrat stuck in a Washington desk job. Just four years later, in 1962, he became the first American to orbit the earth, piloting the Friendship 7 capsule and restoring national pride during the space race with the Soviet Union. Before that flight, he deadpanned to his wife: "Hey, honey, don't be scared. Remember, I'm just going down to the corner store to get a pack of gum." Glenn says he acquired a sense of unbounded possibility from his mother, an elementary schoolteacher, and his father, a coal-shoveling railroad worker who squeaked through the Depression and built up his own plumbing supplies company. Glenn's exploits as a pilot during WWII and Korea, as well as his high-altitude feats as a test pilot in the 1950s, are re-created with hair-raising immediacy in a gripping first-person narrative written with an assist from Taylor (whose books include the memoir A Necessary End). On a personal note, Glenn writes affectingly of his 56-year marriage to organist Annie Castor, with whom he played as a toddler; the strains of being a military family often having to move on short notice; his friendship with Robert Kennedy. The book closes with a heart-stopping account of his momentous return to space at age 77 in 1998 aboard space shuttle Discovery, an event that helped redefine the meaning of "old age." Told without an ounce of pretension, this is a memorable autobiography by a man who embraced public life and held it with a unique blend of Roman virtue and American confidence. BOMC main selection.
November 15, 1999
John Glenn's life story reads like a Frank Capra movie: Small-town Ohio boy weathers the Depression nurtured by conservative patriotic values, marries his high school sweetheart, flies combat missions in two wars, is selected as one of the original Mercury astronauts, becomes an instant national hero as the first American to orbit the earth, is elected to the Senate, and, after serving for four terms, improbably returns to space aboard the Shuttle at age 77. Glenn's account of his storybook life rings as true as his All-American Boy Scout image that Tom Wolfe caricatured in The Right Stuff. Yet even Glenn's long career was not totally immune from the hint of scandal, as he recounts his tangential role in the Keating S&L scandal. Still, in the current national climate, Glenn's account of his life and times provides a refreshing contrast to the public cynicism that all too often attaches to public figures. Recommended for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/99.]--Thomas J. Frieling, Bainbridge Coll. Lib., GA
Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.