The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team

Sparking the Space Age.- A few good Soviet men.- Russia’s future spacemen.- Training days.- Selecting the first cosmonaut.- “Poyekhali”: A man in space.- Vostok flights continue.- The “missing” cosmonauts: Rumour and reality.- First woman of space.- A tragedy, and Gagarin’s final flight.- Pushing the limits.- Orbits of co-operation and the end of an era.

From the reviews:"In this book … Burgess (Australian spaceflight historian) and Hall (British education consultant) provide a wealth of interesting information on the first group of 20 Soviet cosmonauts. … Like the first American astronauts, the cosmonauts interacted in both a cooperative and competitive manner. … The book includes many photographs of the cosmonauts in training and in their personal lives, as well as some recent images of the few surviving members from the original group. Summing Up: Recommended. All undergraduate and public libraries." (J. Z. Kiss, Choice, Vol. 46 (10), June, 2009)“This is a much needed reference work on the early history of the Soviet cosmonaut team. The authors have done an exemplary job in putting together a vast amount of information into a coherent volume that will undoubtedly be of great use for future researchers. That the pictures in this volume are of the highest quality only adds to its value.” (Asif Siddiqi, Quest, Vol. 18 (4), 2011)