Teacher in Space: Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger Legacy

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"Imagine a history teacher making history!"---Christa McAuliffe

Wonderful and Extremely Well Researched

A moving and worthy tribute to a fascinating individual...

Great Book!

Teacher in Space: Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger Legacy
Colin Burgess
Manufacturer: University of Nebraska Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0803261829

Book Description

Christa McAuliffe's name is deeply entrenched in American history as the teacher who died when the Challenger exploded in January 1986. Innovative and devoted to her profession, Christa brought to her own life and to her students the joy and excitement of learning, exploration, and accomplishment. Her integrity and love of life endeared her to people both before and during her NASA training. Honest, direct, and outspoken, she did not hesitate to speak out on behalf of the constituency she felt she had been selected to represent: American public schoolteachers and the children in their classrooms.

It is important to know that Christa's dreams did not die with her. Following the disaster many foundations, institutions, and learning centers were set up to honor the Challenger crew. Craters on the moon and even asteroids have been named in their memory. Teacher in Space explores and celebrates Christa's life and legacy and suggests that her goals of involving and educating children are being fulfilled even today.

Customer Reviews:

"Imagine a history teacher making history!"---Christa McAuliffe.......2007-03-11

I've read several books on Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger tragedy and bought this book because the reviews described it as focusing on the Teacher in Space program. I am mostly interested in how the program came about, how it was announced and promoted, the application process, the selection process, and the training. The book certainly covers those areas but not in as much depth as I hoped. Much of the book is on the life of McAuliffe which is thoroughly covered in Robert T. Hohler's excellent biography "I Touch the Future..." While just over 100 pages with very wide margins, Burgess' work does offer information as well as a more comprehensive look into certain areas than I've found in other books which makes it definitely worthwhile to anyone interested in McAuliffe, Challenger, and the Teacher in Space program.

Burgess describes the lessons McAuliffe was planning to teach in space better than any book I've read so far. This information is found in the chapter "Learning the Ropes." One of the demonstrations involved a screwdriver to show that, in space, the weightless astronaut would turn instead of the screw unless anchored. As to the programs to send civilians into space, Burgess covers the incomplete plans of choosing a journalist to go into space (Walter Cronkite was one of the forty finalists) more thoroughly than elsewhere. While Hohler's book is a better source on the application and selection process of the Teacher in Space candidates, Burgess offers several color photos of the ten finalists I have not seen anywhere else.

Finally, with a publishing date of 2000, Burgess has the benefit of hindsight that most of the other books on Challenger do not have. He gives a brief update on Christa's husband and back-up Teacher-in-Space, Barbara Morgan. I had always thought programs to send civilians into space of any walks of life died with Challenger, but the Teacher in Space program has continued with Morgan taking the lead. She actually completed astronaut training in 1999 with an expectation that she would enter space as an "educator mission specialist." This book was completed before the Columbia disaster, so Burgess sounded very optimistic about her chances. Although delayed, fortunately, Morgan got the chance to live her dream on the space shuttle Endeavour. The book includes a section of color photos, an interesting chapter on "Space Objects Named for the Seven Challenger Astronauts," and a forward by Christa's mother Grace Corrigan.

Wonderful and Extremely Well Researched.......2002-07-20

While much has been written about the engineering and management decisions that lead up to Challenger explosion, the mission, the Challenger crew and the whole Teacher in Space Program have received much less attention. In this book, the author, Colin Burgess, only devotes a few pages to the accident and focuses primarily on the teacher in space program, Christa McAuliffe, her teaching and NASA experiences and of course the aftermath of the accident. Since the book was written well close to fifteen years after the accident, it avoids much of the sadness, anger and the like which dominated many of the early works on this subject. As a result, the author gives us a wonderful book about the life and times of Christa McAuliffe and the Teacher in Space Program. There is also closing chapter on the next Teacher in Space Candidate, Barbara Morgan, who should fly sometime this decade.

As someone who lives across the street from the Johnson Space Center (JSC), it is quite obvious to me that the author spent a considerable amount of time researching her life and experiences at JSC, since all of the places, buildings, etc., are named correctly (using the names in 1986), located in their proper places and the astronaut training she received is as it should be. In other words, not only are you getting a wonderful well written book, it is also well researched.

One final thing to add, the book contains 32 pages of color pictures and all royalties from the book go to the Christa McAuliffe Fund.

A moving and worthy tribute to a fascinating individual..........2000-10-30

This is not the first book written about Christa McAuliffe- but it may well be considered the last word on her. Many previous books have concentrated on the technical aspects of the Challenger explosion that took her life. Others were written about her as a person, but were written so close to the time of the disaster that it was hard for them to be objective and see her life and achievements in their entirety. With the passage of time, it has been possible to set the Teacher In Space Program and Christa's life in their true historical context, and Colin Burgess has here done an admirable job of doing so. The politically-inspired events that led to a teacher being offered a seat on a spacecraft formerly reserved for those with piloting or science tasks to undertake are outlined by Burgess with objectivity and clarity. But what comes through more than anything from this book is the remarkable strength of personality that McAuliffe had, making her the perfect person for a space flight, and how that strength has meant that, even after her death, her plans for space education have gone ahead. It seems that her mission to educate and inspire people to dream about spaceflight and act on those dreams was fulfilled even though she never made it into space. Burgess, having already authored an important body of spaceflight books, has added a work guaranteed to inspire and motivate anyone.

Great Book!.......2000-09-06

As a friend of Colin's, I normally would disqualify myself from reviewing one of his books but I feel that I had to comment on this book.

Colin has done a great job of cutting through the usual American sentimentality whenever the Challenger crew are mentioned and has done a great job in telling us about Christa. However, the book is not just about Christa. The ill fated Teacher in Space program is described in detail as is the launch and the short flight of the Challenger shuttle.

A worthy addition to any space library. Teenagers in particular will like this book.

Customer Reviews:

An Uplifting Story of Life.......2001-04-22

Unlike most books about Christa McAuliffe this one discuses Christa's life before the selection as teacher in space as well as after the selection process and it is written by the person who knew her like no one else, her mother. We learn of Christa's childhood and her spirt and joy that stayed with her during the course of her whole life. Nothing could take this away from her and with it she enriched and touched the lives of every student she had. Corrigan's book using letters and family history paints a touching portrait of Christa no one else could. Everyone should read this book and it will uplift you farther than you ever thought possible and give you a whole new out look on teachers and what the power they have to uplift. No matter what your backround is you will benefit from having read this book.

A Touching Memoir.......1999-08-16

This book is honest and touching. Rarely do we receive the privelege of being allowed into the heart of a mother who has lost a son or daughter. So much is learned from Corrigan's novel.

MAIREAD CORRIGAN & BETTY WILLIAMS (Women Changing the World)

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MAIREAD CORRIGAN & BETTY WILLIAMS (Women Changing the World)
SARAH, BUSCHER , and BETTINA, LING
Manufacturer: The Feminist Press at CUNY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Europe | History & Historical Fiction | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1558612017

Book Description

Now there is a series designed especially to introduce young people to women whose heroic lives have helped to shape our world. Informative, inspiring, and engaging, the series tells of extraordinary achievements women have made throughout the world and introduces younger readers to the realities of other countries and cultures. Grades 6 and up. This unique biography series is designed to introduce young readers to the achievements of women around the world. The books tell the dramatic life stories of courageous women who have overcome adversity and discrimination to make extraordinary contributions to the global community. Each book contains contextual information about the geography, politics, and culture of its subject's homeland and introduces, on an accessible level, concepts such as the global economy, environmental preservation, and human rights. By providing role models, Women Changing the World serves as a source of inspiration for future world changers.

Titles in the Series include:

Customer Reviews:

A Book Of Simple Beauty, For Remembering Gentler Times.......1999-11-16

"Behold The Women," by Daniel Thomas Paulos, is a lovely book, filled with nostalgic photographs of numerous orders of Catholic Nuns, from yesteryear. These beautifully displayed pictures are joined with, simple, moving, naratives, written by some well-known individuals,a nd others, who grew up in a gentler era, where nuns abounded in Catholic schools throughout the world! The point of this book was not to create a "scientific," approach, to remember the history of religious life, but to join these wonderful pictures, with equally simple, direct, and personal rememberances of the leadership these great women have provided us all for decades!

Amateurish but well intentioned.......1999-04-25

It was develped from a good premise and veered into a companion to the school sisters of Christian charity guidebook. Another more professional volume of this nature is necessary and one would hope Mr.. Paulos will then be a contributor rather then "author".

It is a humble book, with the simplicity of truth........1999-01-02

"BEHOLD THE WOMEN" Reviewed by Sister Mary Thomas Noble, O.P.

Fling the pages wide open and let out the fresh air! Here is a new view of nuns to overturn the sterotypes we have been fed for too long. The nuns of the persecution complex, those of the psychological suffocation, the ones with a political agenda in the world of woman's rights and feminism - with these we are sated.

In "BEHOLD THE WOMEN," Dan Paulos gives us not "nuns," but THE nun, that unique, irreplaceable woman that he, or you, or I, once knew, were touched by, and can never forget.

It is a collection piece. The 217 photographs were selected from the more than 400 submitted; the written testimonies represent writers from a broad spectrum of life and levels of society. Through them all runs the feel of genuineness. These nuns are real people.

Some of the photographs have the quality of portraits; others were probably snapped by a Brownie. Some of the tributes come from professional writers; others are are totally simple in style.

For those who have been fortunate enough to know nuns "in the flesh," this book is an affirmation. In the face of the current discussion in the media about nuns and their relevance, in the face, even, of the self-questioning that nuns can sometimes be driven to by modern pressures, in the face of our own aching nostalgia for the values nuns stood for 'when we were very young,' the book is a message of life and hope for the future.

It takes an artist to see things whole. He needs the eyes of a child because children see things in the round, and the eyes of an artist, because artists pursue the details of things relentlessly. In this fine book, Dan Paulos has achieved the perfect blend. He portrays nuns with the huge simplicity and the keen attention to detail that mark the true artist.

In his own right, the compiler is well known for his silhouettes in black and white, having been introduced to the art of paper-cutting by the celebrated American silhouettist, the late Sister Mary Jean Dorcy, OP. It is tempting to see a connection between his mastery of the silhouette, with its delicate tracery and filigree finesse, and the effect he has succeeded in bringing off in this book.

"It is a simple book," he admits. "It is a reminder that 'once upon a time' there were silent women who were, in reality, heroines without even knowing it. It is to all of these unsung activists that we owe our eternal gratitude."

It is indeed a simple book, with the all-inclusive simplcity of truth!

Great photos, saccharine, redundant prose........1998-08-25

This is a wonderful collection of photographs (of unknown or uncredited origin) which Mr. Paulos presents as a sentimental look back at religious women prior to Vatican II. If you are content to browse through the photographs themselves, you may enjoy the nostalgia they engender. There is no rhyme nor reason to their presentation - just a group of photographs, too many of women belonging to the same order, pasted on the page like a grade school project. If you, like me, believe that these women deserve more than just the syrupy, condescending praise haphazardly assembled by Mr. Paulos as a would-be "homage" to their years of selfless dedication and sacrifice, then skip the accompanying articles. While his intentions in putting this book together (one cannot say that it was "written," for that is a misnomer) may have been to document what WAS the life of religious women in America prior to the tumultuous 1960's, the reader can draw no other conclusion than that Mr. Paulos is besotted with the propagandish image of the habited nun demurely going about her business. If he were in touch with religious women today, Mr. Paulos instead would have focused on contemporary women who have persevered in religious life despite tremendous opposition from the Church itself and society to live their vocations as we enter the Third Millennium. The design and presentation of the book is also very sophomoric. (One wonders if this was indeed a "vanity publication," as Mr. Paulos presumably has had the volume privately published.) A much better look at religious life, told from the nuns' point of view, is "Born of Common Hunger: Benedictine Women in Search of Connections" with photos by Annette Brophy and essays by Mara Faulkner. THIS is the real thing.

Nice photos, purple prose hard to swallow........1998-08-24

Filled with enchanting photographs from days gone by, "Behold the Women" is nice to look at but a simply awful read. Having created a montage of nostalgic photographs from "the old days," e.g., pre-Vaticann II, the author felt obligated to annotate his montage with would-be paens to "the good sisters" from a grab-bag of assorted clerics and laity. The majority, if not all, of the photographs contained therein were archival and as such, lose some of their historic significance, as their documentation is nil. Whoever designed this book, and I fear it might be Mr. Paulos himself, violated just about every fundamental principle of book design - it's so naive, it's almost charming! If you can skip the saccharine prose and just focus on the photographs, "Behold the Women" supplies about 15 minutes of visual gratification.

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The Corrigan Women
M. T. Dohaney
Manufacturer: Ragweed Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0920304672

Dublin's Lost Heroines: Mammies and Grannies in a Vanished City

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Dublin's Lost Heroines: Mammies and Grannies in a Vanished City
Kevin Corrigan Kearns
Manufacturer: Gill & MacMillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Oral History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

General | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0717134636

Book Description

Based on interviews conducted during annual visits to Dublin extending over thirty years, acclaimed oral historian Kearns presents a unique picture of women's lives in the old Dublin slums in a masterly work of reminiscence, celebration and dignity. The book tells of how they lived, the difficulties they faced, poverty, unemployment, the fecklessness of their men folk and their heroic struggle to maintain the basic decencies of human life in inhuman conditions.

Book Description

In a fragile alliance, the natives are stirring uneasily under their foreign rulers. Rebellion is brewing, and at the heart of the conflict lies the bloody and powerful cult of the god Aoun, whose followers will stop at nothing to rid their land of alien domination. So civil servant Renille vo Chaumelle, scion of a proud, conquering line mingled with native blood, is conscripted as a spy and ordered to penetrate the fortress-temple known as the Fastness of the Gods. There he is to discover the secrets of the priests of Aoun and - if the chance presents itself - assassinate the lead priest, named in legend as the god's own son. But in the holiest depths of the temple, Renille finds there is more to the cult than his superiors suspect - far more than they will ever believe. What he learns leads him to the beautiful princess Jathondi, daughter of the native ruler, who is fated to be the crux of a violent confrontation between the fanatic followers of a flesh-hungry god and their arrogant overlords. Together, Jathondi and Renille must brave a whirlwind of revolution and apocalyptic magic that could shatter a nation, and open the long-sealed portal between heaven and earth.

Customer Reviews:

the characters are there........2004-11-13

this book takes you to fictional, Vonahrish colonized Kahnderule (akin to India/S. Asia), where a decidedly alien (though now degenerated) 'god' is still lurking about. it's a beautifully detailed and colorful fantasy setting.

Perhaps to match her setting and her characters --the two leads being entre-deux-- her style of prose remains the same, but the way she constructs the story/characters/meaning has a different flavor... more subtle, and more abstract. I'd guess that she was experimentating a little. I think it's an excellent book, but if your looking for another Eliste VoDerrival, she's not here.

(Note to Amazon; I used some of the same phrasing that i used for a review elsewhere).

A little disappointed, but good all the same..........2003-12-11

First off, I have to say that Paula Volsky is one of my favourite authors. I absolutely loved "The Grand Ellipse," and I enjoyed "The White Tribunal."

After shelling out $20 at the local B&N for the trade paperback, though, I feel a little cheated. The story is interesting, and Volsky's graceful, descriptive style makes "The Gates of Twilight" a good enough read. However, there is absolutely no character development (that I can see, anyway). I found it hard to really like the main characters, or care what happened to them. The two main characters never really grow as people, and the romance just kind of popped up--it feels like it was there only because it was expected of Volsky.

That being said, I suggest for those set on buying this novel to get the mass-market paperback...or if you just want to read it, pick it up in the library. It's good, but I prefer "The Grand Ellipse."

My favorite Volsky book.......2000-06-30

The reviewers that said they were disappointed inspired me to write this because I completely disagree. Granted, different people like different books, but I truly think this is a great book. I like "Illusion" and "The White Tribunal", but I love "Wolf of Winter" and "The Gates of Twilight". Both of them gripped my imagination firmly and pulled me into Volsky's world completely.

Paula Volsky has a gift of being about to write in such a way that an exotic location becomes so lifelike that you feel like you are really there, and I never felt so completely drawn in as I did in this book. The story is intruguing, the characters are believeable, and the descriptiveness of the location is incredibly lifelike.

Nice try but not quite.......1999-05-04

If you've read "Illusion" you know what I mean. The book is good, I like the settings of 18th century India at the time of the British settlement that were used as inspiration of the story, but the characters were too bidimensional. You never quite got to know them deep inside, its as if they're just actors playing a role, very unlike "Illusion" were you could feel the passion and see the souls of the characters. And the secondary characters were used as fillers, just to make it look complex. But even so, it's not boring, it's as deep a reading as the previous books and its quite entertaining, but it didn't leave me thinking like Illusion did at the end, which by the way was pretty easy to find out. But these are only my opinions, and I encourage people to find out by themselves, as I did with Illusion, which is still my favorite. This one might turn out to be yours.

A disapointment after "Illusions".......1998-11-18

Altogether, this book was a slight disapointment after reading Illusions. You never really connect with the characters ( you just don't relate to them, and they remain flat throughout the book), and some grotesque scenes were too overly descriptive to swallow down. The imagery and details are great, but the plot and weak character developements really pulled it down.

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The Gates of Boombox Heaven
Bob Zark
Manufacturer: Panic Button Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LWSFMM

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The Twilight Gate
Rhondi Vilott Salsitz
Manufacturer: Walker & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0802782132

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Twilight Gate
Rhondi Salsitz
Manufacturer: Walker
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NZVYZW

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THE TWILIGHT GATE.
Rhondi Vilott. Slasitz
Manufacturer: Walker and Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UELRV2

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Gates of twilight,
Henry E Harman
Manufacturer: Stone & Barringer co
ProductGroup: Book
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