“Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight” by Jay Barbree – A Cosmic Conqueror

At this stage the life of Neil Armstrong has already been rather well documented, but the fact of the matter remains that his more introverted personality still left many blanks, questions to be answered, and room for who-knows how many more interesting facts.

Thankfully, the man who is perhaps the most successful space journalist in history and close friend of Neil Armstrong for more than fifty years, Jay Barbree, has stepped up to the challenge of re-telling the story of the first man to walk on the moon in as much detail and accuracy as possible.


As you can imagine, such a long friendship with one of the most notable and respectable people in modern history has yielded Barbree with some rather deep insights, all of which were put to good use in Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight.

The book is, rather shortly-summarized, a novelized recounting of Armstrong's life, as well as the earlier stages of the manned space program ran by the United States. Barbree claims that he aims for as much accuracy as possible, though there are a few things you ought to be aware of about his method of writing.

To begin with, the author sometimes puts himself in Armstrong's shoes to recreate his thoughts, a generally-harmless practice which nevertheless may very well end up depicting an even slightly skewed and biased image of the man.

In addition to that, we are to trust Barbree on the exactitude and veracity of the numerous quotes he brings forth, especially considering that he claims them to be direct and are “quotes by me (the author) and others I know to be trustworthy”.

I'm guessing you can already see the problem with such an approach, considering the claim. As a matter of fact, those who take the time to research will see that a few quotes had small modifications done to them to serve the author's purposes.

Some facts are presented in a misleading way, but one which prevents the author from being flat-out wrong. For instance, when he states that Tom Stafford had secretly test-flown Russian MiGs, he omits to mention that it happened many years in the future from the current moment in the book.

Or when it is stated that signals between Apollo and Mission Control could be delayed by more than 20 minutes, it is omitted that the delay was often one of thirty-five minutes. In other words, the book has small inaccuracies scattered here and there which, sadly, put in doubt the veracity of some facts.

Putting all of that aside though, as a novel this book is a rather entertaining one. If you are looking for a more entertaining way of getting some thorough general information on the life of Neil Armstrong, one that will make you experience all the thrills of space travel and take you right there to the moon, then you've certainly hit the jackpot.

The writing itself is actually quite descriptive and fascinating in its own way, giving way to plenty of smaller details which slowly weave together a beautiful and compelling portrait of one of the most interesting men of our generation.

As long as you don't treat this as a history book but rather an effort to recreate Neil's life into the story it truly has been and don't mind small inaccuracies, you are certainly going to enjoy yourself... especially if space travel is a subject you even remotely enjoy.

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Jay Barbree Jay Barbree is a journalist for NBC News, with his expertise lying in space travel, amongst other things being the only one in his line of work to have covered every manned space mission in the U.S. He is also the author of numerous books and two memoirs (so far), with one of his more recent and better-known works being Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight.