Endurance

Starred review from October 23, 2017
Kelly, a former astronaut who spent a record-setting year aboard the International Space Station (ISS), shares his experiences of space travel in this fascinating memoir. He shifts between the many aspects of his year-long project (“As much as I worked on scientific experiments, I think I learned at least as much about practical issues of how to conduct a long-range exploration mission”) and his early life. After growing up influenced by Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, he pursued a career as a fighter pilot, a test, pilot, and finally an astronaut. Throughout, Kelly gives the reader a sense of what life is like inside the ISS, where there are “rooms upon rooms, each of which serve different purposes, its own equipment and hardware, and its own feeling and smell.” He is unsparing in detailing the danger that “space junk” presents to the space station (“If the satellite hits, the resulting destruction would be... akin to a nuclear explosion”), but he also often displays a sense of humor, especially when describing his capsule’s reentry into Earth’s atmosphere (“As soon as you realize you’re not going to die, it’s the most fun you’ll ever have in your life”). His is an inspirational story of true endurance under pressure.

November 27, 2017
Recently retired astronaut Kelly—who holds the American record for the longest consecutive stretch of days in space—brings a no-nonsense, straightforward style of delivery to the audio edition of his memoir. A New Jersey native whose father and mother were police officers, Kelly embarked on his NASA career after service as a Navy pilot. In the book he tackles such weighty matters as marriage and family struggles, personal and national tragedies, and the loneliness of extended missions on the International Space Station. He doesn’t miss a beat with regard to enunciation and pronunciation and shifts gears smoothly between the space travelogue and biographical threads. His anecdotes about cross-cultural relationships with Russian cosmonauts on the station—along with quotidian details about to eating and going to the bathroom in space—provide an opportunity for his droll wit to shine through. Listeners with at least some appreciation for deadpan delivery will be satisfied. A Knopf hardcover.