Man on the moon - Andrew Chaikin

Through the windows of the slowly turning spacecraft they looked out at the place where the sun had once been, and there was the moon: a huge, magnificent sphere bathed in the eerie blue light of earthshine, each crater rendered in ghostly detail.

The race to the moon was won spectacularly by Apollo 11 on 20 July 1969. When astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their 'giant leap for mankind' across a ghostly lunar landscape, they were watched by some 600 million people on Earth 240,000 miles away.

A Man on the Moon is the definitive account of the heroic Apollo programme: from the tragedy of the fire in Apollo 1 during a simulated launch, Apollo 8's bold pioneering flight around the moon, through the euphoria of the first moonwalk, to the discoveries made by the first scientist on the moon aboard Apollo 17.

Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with the astronauts and mission personnel, this is the story of the twentieth century's greatest human achievement, minute-by-minute, through the eyes of those who were there.

'Impressive and illuminating' -Tom Hanks

'The authoriative masterpiece' - Los Angeles Times