Jeff Shesol

"Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy, and the New Battleground of the Cold War"

ABSTRACT -- On February 20, 1962, after multiple delays and cancellations, astronaut John Glenn sat in the Friendship 7 capsule, ready for launch. Glenn had been passed over for previous missions, only to find himself on the stick for America's first effort at an orbital flight—and there was a lot riding on his mission. Americans were running a distant second in the Space Race, though there was a growing belief that the country could catch up to its Soviet competitors. NASA's manned flight efforts had been plagued by technical failures, and now the world's eyes were on them. At the White House, President Kennedy was desperate to reverse a string of stinging defeats the Soviets had handed his administration. An orbital flight would be a public and much-needed win.

Drawing on new archival sources, personal interviews, and previously unpublished notes by Glenn himself, Jeff Shesol's new book Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy, and the New Battleground of the Cold War offers a gripping narrative that reveals the personal, technical, and political conflicts that shaped Glenn's historic space flight and revitalized the American drive to win the Space Race and explore the cosmos. Jeff Shesol's talk will draw from his book, which will be released on June 1st.

SPEAKER -- Jeff Shesol is the author of Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court and Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade, both selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. He is a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and is a founding partner of West Wing Writers. A Rhodes Scholar, he holds degrees in history from Oxford University and Brown University and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The New Yorker News Desk.

Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov