{"product_id":"9780547545363","title":"Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons","description":"\u003cb\u003eNow a CBS All Access series: “A riveting tale of rocketry, the occult, and boom-and-bust 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles” (\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e headline screamed: ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSION. The man known as Jack Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform a derided sci-fi plotline into actuality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a devotee of the city’s occult scene.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Fueled by childhood dreams of space flight, Parsons was a leader of the motley band of enthusiastic young men who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a cornerstone of the American space program. But Parsons’s wild imagination also led him into a world of incantations and orgiastic rituals—if he could make rocketry a reality, why not black magic?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e George Pendle re-creates the world of John Parsons in this dazzling portrait of prewar superstition, cold war paranoia, and futuristic possibility. Peopled with such formidable real-life figures as Howard Hughes, Aleister Crowley, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein, \u003ci\u003eStrange Angel\u003c\/i\u003e explores the unruly consequences of genius.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The basis for a new miniseries created by Mark Heyman and produced by Ridley Scott, this biography “vividly tells the story of a mysterious and forgotten man who embodied the contradictions of his time . . . when science fiction crashed into science fact. . . . [It] would make a compelling work of fiction if it weren’t so astonishingly true” (\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003cbr\u003e  ","brand":"Houghton Mifflin Harcourt","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47123265126640,"sku":"9780547545363","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780547545363_p0.jpg?v=1769896749","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780547545363","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}