A history of exploration through eleven objects from the Air and Space Museum: "Takes you behind the scenes with firsthand stories and rare photos." —William F. Readdy, former NASA astronaut and Space Shuttle commanderThroughout human history, across cultures and landscapes, countless individuals have gazed with wonder in the same direction: upward. Getting to space was no easy task, and our quest to further explore the universe, to understand the impossibly vast he...

WINNER OF THE DEXTER PRIZE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGYLaunched by the Third Reich in late 1944, the first ballistic missile, the V-2, fell on London, Paris, and Antwerp after covering nearly two hundred miles in five minutes. It was a stunning achievement, one that heralded a new age of ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles. Michael J. Neufeld gives the first comprehensive and accurate account of the story behind one of the greatest engineering feats of Worl...

A concise history of spaceflight, from military rocketry through Sputnik, Apollo, robots in space, space culture, and human spaceflight today.Spaceflight is one of the greatest human achievements of the twentieth century. The Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957; less than twelve years later, the American Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon. In this volume of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Michael Neufeld offers a concise history of sp...

Spaceflight is one of the greatest human achievements of the twentieth century. The Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957; less than twelve years later, the American Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon.Michael Neufeld explains that "the space program" should not be equated only with human spaceflight. Since the 1960s, unmanned military and commercial spacecraft have been orbiting near the Earth, and robotic deep-space explorers have sent back stunning images of fa...

Peace on Earth: The Role of Religion in Peace and Conflict Studies provides a critical analysis of faith and religious institutions in peacebuilding practice and pedagogy. The work captures the synergistic relationships among faith traditions and how multiple approaches to conflict transformation and peacebuilding result in a creative process that has the potential to achieve a more detailed view of peace on earth, containing breadth as well as depth.Library and bookstore shelves ar...

Curator and space historian at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum delivers a brilliantly nuanced biography of controversial space pioneer Wernher von Braun.Chief rocket engineer of the Third Reich and one of the fathers of the U.S. space program, Wernher von Braun is a source of consistent fascination. Glorified as a visionary and vilified as a war criminal, he was a man of profound moral complexities, whose intelligence and charisma were coupled with ...

Dr. Michael Baden has been involved in some of the most high-profile civil rights and police brutality cases in United States history, from the government's 1976 re-investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the 2014 death of Michael Brown, whose case sparked the initial Ferguson protests that grew into the Black Lives Matter movement.The playbook hasn't changed since 1979, when Dr. Baden was demoted from his job as New York City's Chief Medical Examiner afte...

Wie führen wir Gemeinden in eine lebendige und hoffnungsvolle Zukunft? Michael Bendorf zeigt Zukunftslinien für die Entwicklung von Ortsgemeinden auf und entfaltet die Kompetenzen, die geistliche Leiterinnen und Leiter heute brauchen. Dabei wird deutlich: Geistliche Leitungskompetenz reift dort, wo sich Führungspersonen in ihrer persönlichen Entwicklung für das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes öffnen und sich von ihm leiten lassen. Anhand einer praxisnahen Matrix aus den drei Kernfeldern Sach-,...

Die brennenden Fragen um Krankheit und Heilung bewegen viele Menschen. In seelsorgerlich einfühlsamer Weise gibt Wolfgang J. Bittner mit diesem Buch biblisch begründete Antwort. Dabei wird deutlich: Heilung gehört wie die Verkündigung des Evangeliums zum Auftrag der Kirche. Sie ist ein für das Leben der Gemeinde wesentliches Zeichen, in dem sich schon jetzt Gottes Reich und Herrschaft manifestieren. "Wolfgang J. Bittners Versuch, theologische Fragen im Zusammenhang mit Krankenheilung umfas...

In mid-1943 Nazi Germany entered a crisis from which it was to emerge vanquished. Faced with a shortage of manpower in armaments factories, the Third Reich sent concentration camp prisoners to work as slaves. While the genocide of the Jews and the Gypsies continued at extermination camps, numerous outside "Kommandos" were set up in the vicinity of the large concentration camps. The Dora Camp, located in the center of Germany, was one of the most notorious. Originally a mere Kommando attach...

Extraordinarily powerful stories of ordinary people locked up for crimes they did not commit, and how they were freed against great odds.A nightmare from a thousand B-movies: a horrible crime is committed in your neighborhood, and the police knock at your door. A witness swears you are the perpetrator; you have no alibi, and no one believes your protestations of innocence. You're convicted, sentenced to hard time in maximum security, or even death row, where you await the execution...

Wer in unserer Zeit auf die Entwicklung der Schöpfung schaut, kann schnell ins Seufzen geraten. Die ganze Schöpfung steckt in einer Krise; die Not vieler Menschen schreit zum Himmel. Mancher befürchtet, dass unsere Erde letztlich den berühmten Bach runtergehen wird. Zugleich aber stimmt die Bibel eine andere Melodie an: eine Melodie der Hoffnung, die sich vom Anfang des Alten bis zum Ende des Neuen Testaments durchzieht. Michael Bendorf begibt sich auf Spurensuche in der Heiligen Schrift u...