{"product_id":"2940015027662","title":"Yuri Gagarin: A Biography","description":"ABOUT THE BOOK \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1-2 paragraphs from the intro to the book \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn a clear, quiet day in April, 1961, two schoolgirls in Russia’s Saratov region looked into the sky and saw a huge, glowing ball hurtling towards the earth. Five tons of charred steel hit the ground, bounced, then fell again, leaving a huge smoking crater in the plains.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo kilometers away, a peasant farmer and her daughter were frozen to the spot, staring at a bright orange figure with a large, round white head and a huge cape striding towards them. The terrified farmer and her daughter turned to run. Then the figure cried out, not in a space language, but native Russian, “Don’t be afraid! I am a Soviet like you!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey moved closer to him and saw, instead of a alien invader or a spy, a man in an orange jumpsuit, dragging a cumbersome parachute. He pushed back the visor on his white helmet and they could see the red letters CCCP stenciled on the front. “Could it be that you have just descended from space?” asked the farmer. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man stood only 5’2” and had the broad, plain features of a typical Muscovite. “Yes, I have,” he said, flashing his winning smile, a smile soon to be famous throughout the entire world. He said, “I must find a telephone to Moscow.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man had just completed a 102-minute orbit of the Earth. His name was Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin. He was twenty-seven years old and he had changed Earth’s history forever.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Reds Win Running Lead in Race to Control Space” screamed a headline. Since the tiny Sputnik had orbited Earth four years earlier, the United States and the Soviet Union had been locked in a battle for more advanced technologies. Both nations had immense technological resources. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe United States had imported several prominent German scientists during Project Paperclip, clearing their records of Nazi involvement in exchange for their knowledge of rocketry. The Soviet Union had the legacy of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the eccentric eccentric pioneer of astronautics and the de facto leadership of visionary engineer Sergei Korolev, as well was a powerful thirst to prove themselves. Each nation was determined to be the first in space. The Soviet Union’s early successes in the Space Race were an undeniable challenge to the United States’ scientific and political authority. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYuri was born March 9, 1934 on a collective farm 100 miles outside Moscow. His mother Anna worked the fields and his father Alexei was a carpenter. Anna was well educated and kept many books in the house. For the early years on the farm, life was calm and scheduled. Family members recall Yuri as a mischievous, happy child.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, and life was thrown into chaos. German officers occupied their home and sent Yuri's brother Valentin and his sister Zoya to slave labour camps in Poland. Yuri, his parents, and his younger brother Boris lived in a tiny mud hut for 21 months, the remainder of the German occupation. Alexei Leonov, a fellow cosmonaut and first man to walk in space, recalled this time as “the formative years in Yuri’s life.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring the war, a Soviet aircraft was shot down near the village. Yuri and the other village children fed the pilots and kept them hidden from the Nazis until they could be rescued. It was then that Yuri knew that he wanted to be a pilot. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1946, when he was 13 and the war was over, Yuri’s siblings returned. Their father moved the family home (plank by plank) to the nearby town Gzhatsk. Yuri joined his school’s aviation club and learned to fly light aircraft. His favorite subjects were physics and math, and he had a smile that all the girls loved.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1955 he entered Orenburg Military Pilot's School, graduating in 1957 as a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force. In August of 1959, Yuri’s record was reviewed for consideration for the new top-secret cosmonaut training program. Among age and physical restrictions (candidates had to be under 5’9” and weigh less than 158 lbs to fit in the capsule) the project guidelines required future cosmonauts to be intelligent, used to stressful situations, and physically fit. Flight experience was not a very high priority, since (unlike the American space capsules) the Soviet spacecraft were designed to be mostly automated. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOf the 3,000 initial candidates, Yuri was of 200 selected for further interviews and training, and then was one of 20 who passed all the rigorous mental and physical tests. They were locked in hypobaric chambers, spun in centrifuges, put in solitary confinement to test the effects of “public loneliness,” and subjected to every medical test kno","brand":"Hyperink","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47152985899248,"sku":"2940015027662","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940015027662_p0.jpg?v=1763618745","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940015027662","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}