Review By: Evan Waugh
Published: 2024
Genre(s): Nonfiction
Audience: Adult, 11–12
Content Warnings: Violence, death, traumatic events, disaster imagery
Goodreads Link: Challenger
Publisher’s Summary:
The definitive, dramatic, minute-by-minute story of the Challenger disaster based on new archival research and in-depth reporting.
On January 28, 1986, just seventy-three seconds into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven people on board. Millions of Americans witnessed the tragic deaths of a crew including New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Like 9/11 or JFK’s assassination, the Challenger disaster is a defining moment in 20th-century history—yet the details of what took place that day, and why, have largely been forgotten. Until now.
Based on extensive archival records and meticulous, original reporting, Challenger follows a handful of central protagonists—including each of the seven members of the doomed crew—through the years leading up to the accident, a detailed account of the tragedy itself, and into the investigation that followed. It’s a tale of optimism and promise undermined by political cynicism and cost-cutting in the interests of burnishing national prestige; of hubris and heroism; and of an investigation driven by leakers and whistleblowers determined to bring the truth to light. Throughout, there are the ominous warning signs of a tragedy to come, recognized but then ignored, and ultimately kept from the public.
Higginbotham reveals the history of the shuttle program, the lives of men and women whose stories have been overshadowed by the disaster as well as the designers, engineers, and test pilots who struggled against the odds to get the first shuttle into space.
Review:
In Challenger, Adam Higginbotham recounts the disaster of the NASA space shuttle of the same name. Through painstaking research, Higginbotham goes as far back as the inception of the Apollo program – and the disaster of its Apollo I lander – to establish a clear precedent of negligence, bureaucratic red-tape, and lack of funding that contributed to the explosion of the Challenger. As someone who was not alive for the launch of the shuttle and its aftermath (90s baby), I was blown away by the sheer negligence of NASA and its contractors, who were looking to launch the shuttles and continue the program by any means necessary.
While a captivating story, Challenger is dense with cumbersome details of technical specs and other information of the building of the rockets that, while interesting, can hamper one’s reading of the book; I almost did not finish the book in the very beginning due to the sheer amount of technical information being thrown at me, but I persevered and ended up enjoying it. This same amount of exposition might dissuade students from picking up this book, so – should teachers decide to procure Challenger for their own classroom libraries – this will be a case of making sure that you give the right book to the right student(s).
