Rockets and Missiles: The Life Story of a Technology

by A. Bowdoin Van Riper

Overview

Beginning with World War II, missiles transformed the art of war. For the first time, cities of warring nations were vulnerable to sudden, unannounced, long-distance attacks. At the same time, rockets made possible one of the great triumphs of the modern age—the exploration of space. Beginning with the origins of rocketry in medieval and early modern Asia, Rockets and Missiles traces the history of the technology that led to both the great fear of global warfare and the great excitement of the Space Age.

This volume focuses on rocketry in late-twentieth-century Western Europe, Russia, and the United States, as well as the spread of rocket technology to East Asia and the Middle East. It covers the full history of rocket technology—including how rockets improved in performance, reliability, and versatility and how they affected everyday life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801887925
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	11/26/2007
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

A. Bowdoin Van Riper, an adjunct professor at Southern Polytechnic State University, is the author of Looking Up: Aviation and the Popular Imagination; Science in Popular Culture: A Reference Guide; and Men among the Mammoths: Victorian Science and the Discovery of Human Prehistory.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Timeline
1. Introduction
2. The Age of Black Powder, 1000-1900
3. The Birth of Modern Rocketry, 1900-1942
4. Rockets in World War II, 1939-1945
5. Rockets for Research, 1945-1960
6. Ballistic Missiles and the Cold War, 1945-1990
7. Rockets to the Moon, 1960-1975
8. Tactical Missiles in the Cold War, 1950-1990
9. Spaceflight Becomes Routine, 1970—Present
10. Missiles after the Cold War, 1990-Present
11. Conclusion: What Next?
Glossary
Further Reading
Index

Editorial Reviews

This volume provides a concise, clear history of rockets and missiles from ancient times to the present . . . Van Riper does an exemplary job in lifting out the critical points from a mass of potentially intimidating detail, and explaining these in terms that lay persons can grasp . . . In sum, this book recommends itself as a lucid history of missile technology for the general reader.
—Richard Beyler, H-Net Reviews

From the Publisher

This volume provides a concise, clear history of rockets and missiles from ancient times to the present . . . Van Riper does an exemplary job in lifting out the critical points from a mass of potentially intimidating detail, and explaining these in terms that lay persons can grasp . . . In sum, this book recommends itself as a lucid history of missile technology for the general reader.

H-Net Reviews - Richard Beyler

This volume provides a concise, clear history of rockets and missiles from ancient times to the present... Van Riper does an exemplary job in lifting out the critical points from a mass of potentially intimidating detail, and explaining these in terms that lay persons can grasp... In sum, this book recommends itself as a lucid history of missile technology for the general reader.

— Richard Beyler

H-Net Reviews