Book Birthdays celebrate one year of a book’s life in social media posts, reviews, and more. This month we’re saying Happy First Book Birthday to Star Bound: A Beginner’s Guide to the American Space Program, from Goddard’s Rockets to Goldilocks Planets and Everything in Between (Nebraska, 2025) by Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III.
About the Book:
Authored by two veteran space writers with unique insights into the topic, Star Bound offers up the story of Americans in space with a focus on the cultural and societal contexts of the country’s most important missions rather than engineering and technical minutiae. Vibrant, positive, and humorous, Star Bound is packed with facts and stories for novice space fans. And sprinkled in with the history are lists of the greatest space songs, books, movies, and more—all designed to make space exploration accessible to even the casual reader.
A Word from the Authors:
When we began writing Star Bound in 2022, we set out to write a general history of U.S. spaceflight that would appeal to both diehard space enthusiasts and those just beginning to be interested in the subject. This was not an altogether easy task—having created a large online space community, it can be hard to engage people with extensive knowledge of space history and beginners alike, because you’re always going to “miss” or gloss over something.
Plus, we really wanted to make Star Bound fun and readable, like you were chatting about spaceflight with two laid-back friends, nothing too intimidating or “textbook” for readers just coming to the topic. In the end, we combined a more or less straight chronological history of the development of the American space program, from the earliest liquid-fueled rocket experiments to the emergence of SpaceX and the current challenge of returning to the moon, with somewhat tongue-in-cheek “Top 10” lists and an occasional lack of reverence for conventional wisdom.
Despite the various challenges, we believe we succeeded—in the last year, we have received fantastic feedback from both the space world and space exploration newcomers that the book does a nice job of explaining the sometimes simple, sometimes mundane, and occasionally plain weird corners of space history.
While the world of spaceflight is at the precipice of significant change at this time and in the years ahead, Star Bound’s predictions may eventually seem out of date. In fact, we hope they eventually seem out of date, since that will mean our engineers, inventors, and astronauts are making progress. Still, we are very proud to tell the story of U.S. spaceflight history and beyond, and we’re looking forward to the issuance of Star Bound in paperback format later this year.
Reviews:
“An outstanding overview of American space exploration. . . . This soars.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“[Star Bound] digs impressively deep to place the growth of America’s space program in context. . . . [Carney and McCandless are] a writing marriage made in heaven’s starry skies.”—Rebecca Coffey, Forbes
“With Carney and McCandless’s breezy style, this enthusiastic and accessible history will engage the curiosity of both general readers and seasoned space enthusiasts alike.”—Library Journal, starred review
“The authors should be commended for concisely charting a path through dozens of topics and telling interesting stories.”—Mary Damon, Quest
“There are so many topics that Carney and McCandless explore that I suspect any reader will still learn a sizeable amount—and their wit and unabashed geekiness over all things space make for a delightful read and may remind you why you fell in love with spaceflight.”—Jaime Herndon, Mercury Magazine
“Two of the world’s foremost space history chroniclers have joined forces to tell the tale of how spaceflight developed and nurtured our existence over the last century or more. They fly us through the decades with their characteristic wry humor, making Star Bound both an entertaining and an informative read.”—Francis French, coauthor of Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961–1965
“A sweeping, comprehensive, and detailed spaceflight history and primer, Star Bound is not just informative, it’s engaging and fun—less an academic text than a lively conversation with that one cool friend who’s funny, snarky, and oh-so-smart.”—David Hitt, author of Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story
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