Inside The Space Race

Inside The Space Race
Lawrence E. Lamb M.D.
Synergy Books
ISBN: 1-933538-39-2
Non-Fiction, Astronautics, American History
Reviewed by Lee Gooden

“Mankind’s evolution is usually thought of in terms of his physical and mental changes through time, as exemplified by the Darwinian concept. But man’s understanding and use of those things in his physical universe is also a form of evolution. This is exemplified by the first use of stone in the Stone Age to today’s age of technology in the conquest of space and exploration of the universe.”
- Lawrence E. Lamb M.D.
In Stephen King’s wonderful treatise on horror, the book Danse Macabre he opens with a chapter about the affect on the American people of the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik. King remembered sitting in a matinee movie of The Earth Versus the Flying Saucers. It was October 4th, 1957 and King was ten years old. The saucers were about to attack the White House. The movie was shut down and the manager made the announcement, “The Russians have put a satellite into orbit around the Earth. They call it Spootnik.”
An ominous cloud of fear descended on America. Rumors circulated that the Soviet Union’s dastardly long term goal was to incorporate nuclear weapons into outer-space to be used against enemies of communism and allow the continuance of the so-called Red Tide?s march toward world domination. Suddenly the Cold War kicked up a notch and the Space Race began in earnest.
Lawrence E. Lamb, M.D. has given the reader an insider’s point of view of the behind the scenes, not sugar-coated for the media. His account shows the reality and duality of people working together towards the unknown. Inside the Space Race is a behind-the-scenes look at machinations and fine workings from manipulating stifling bureaucratic deterrents, to the brilliant medical innovations, heroes and hardships that were stepping stones towards man’s journey into outer space and beyond.
Lamb came from humble beginnings and became expert in the cardiovascular field and was enlisted as chief of the Clinical Sciences Division at the School of Aerospace Medicine in the Aerospace Medical Center. “I had come a long way from a four-room shack in a Kansas as a child mired in poverty to work with national leaders and to play a meaningful role in the greatest adventure of this century.”

Inside The Space Race is written by a man who was never been jaded by life. His enthusiasm for learning and the future of man’ symbiotic relationship with outer space is contagious. Inside The Space Race is four-hundred-twenty-four pages, including, some wonderful black and white glossy photographs of the space race luminaries. Including, photographs of President John F. Kennedy and The First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and Vice President Lyndon B Johnson and his wife Lady Bird (Whom Lamb had befriended and became LBJ’s “unofficial” official personal physician) and many others. Lamb has seen fit to show copies of letter from various individuals, four appendixes that show how dedicated and instrumental he was to America’s pioneering fledgling space program. Lamb’s epilogue reaches for a future of mankind and outer-space that is continuation of Neil Armstrong’s quote when Armstrong took his first step onto the moon, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”