Thoroughly researched and compulsively readable, this is one of the best narrative nonfiction books I've ever read. Higginbotham covers the Challenger disaster in a way that made me feel like I was there. And he gives enough background that made it clear how they got to the point of the disaster. I so appreciated that Higginbotham spends time on the point of view of so many involved, from the engineers to the managers to the astronauts and their families, because it really gives a well rounded view of the space shuttle program and the Challenger disaster. And it really makes one think about the idea of American exceptionalism. In many ways, that ideal is what got Americans into space to begin with, but in the end, that same ideal was definitely at least in part to blame for the downfall of the shuttle program. Overall a fascinating read, one I highly recommend.

I received this as digital galley from NetGalley.

It was crazy how many times the guys at NASA and the various engineers and contractors had the chance to interrupt and bring up various concerns that they had about the Challenger shuttle. Or when they did speak up they were bullied and encouraged to let the flight go on. It makes a tragedy even more tragic somehow.

Very readable engrossing book that I couldn't stop talking to people about for week.s.

A phenomenal and at times nauseating read. Challenger was the first event I remember vividly. Seven years old, sitting on my mom's bed, I recall being confused but knowing it wasn't good.

Challenger answered questions I had while handling the crew's memory with the utmost care. You get to know them, their quirks, their families, and it's heartbreaking because you know how their story ends.

Challenger also despells the notion of a villain/s. Bureaucracy and hubris were the main culprits. Over missions and years, dumb-luck was taken as proficiency in the shuttle program and NASA's requirements for the launch slipped. Go-no-go criteria for launching went from any fault will cause a delay to give us a reason not to fly which is vastly different.

Challenger has my highest recommendation! Thank you to Avid Reader Press/ Simon & Schuster for allowing me to read an advanced copy of Challenger!

On Tuesday, January 28,1986, I asked to be excused from class, met one of my besties, and went immediately to the one teacher who was showing the Challenger launch, extra-special due to a teacher, Christa McAuliffe, the first civilian to go to space, was aboard this launch. We hovered outside the classroom, watching through the window, cheering with everyone as lift-off happened. Seventy-three seconds later [though it seemed like a million hours at the time], those cheers turned to tears and sobbing as we watched the unimaginable happen. I went back to my class, announced what happened [my teacher was initially not amused and told me to not joke like that], and a minute later, the loudspeaker came on and we were sent home [we returned on Thursday, subdued, talking nothing but Challenger, to each other and in every class].

The disaster has always stayed with me - I have always found space travel to be mind-boggling amazing, and the idea of a regular person, a teacher, could also go TO SPACE, just blew my nerdy 17 year old mind. To watch the disaster and wonder just what went wrong was something I thought about again and again over the years [I was married to a space "nut" and learned a lot about the space program {whether I wanted to learn about it or not LOL} and the Apollo missions, but even he knew little about the disaster and what went wrong], so when I saw this book, I knew I had to read it; finally I would know more.

Be careful what you wish for.

This is not just a book about Challenger. It is a book about the space program overall and what it took to get to the point where important flaws were ignored [it was this same behavior that would cause the Columbia disaster 17 years later], arrogance and ego took over, and ultimately seven magnificent [and deeply loved and respected], brave people lost their lives.

I spent a good chunk of this book flabbergasted [I mean, a rocket in SPACE, with humans aboard will never NOT be mind-boggling], a touch confused [some of the book was WAY above my pay-grade LOL], angry [the chapters leading up to the disaster are mind-boggling {yes, THAT is word-of-the-moment as I cannot come up with anything that is close!!}, and will forever piss me off], and then tears. I spent much of those chapters either angry, bawljng, or both and by the time I was finished with the book, I was emotionally drained and filled with so much compassion and caring for the families left behind and all the pieces of their fractured lives they were left to try and reassemble.

This is an exceptionally well-written, meticulously researched, and well, just brilliant. Absolutely 100% brilliant. It will take all you THINK you know, grind it into dust, and rework it into the truth it is. And you will never, ever, be the same [even now, writing this, I am crying]. I highly recommend this to everyone!!

Very well done!

Thank you to NetGalley, Adam Higginbotham, and Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For Americans of a certain age the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on January – 1986, barely two minutes into its flight, killing all seven astronauts aboard, is along with the assassination of president kennedy and the attacks of Spetember 11 to which we can easily answer “What were you doing when…” The scale of the Challenger disaster is, to be sure, not that of the othr two. But as a blow to America’s self-image the Challenger was an event whose scale can’t be overrated. And in Adam Higginbotham’s perfectly crafted, amazingly gripping and even suspenseful Challnger, we can see that this realtively minor event was enormously revelatoiry of the hubris, greed, and lack of concern for people that are hallmarks of America.
Higginbotham’s account of the failures and flaws of our soace program doesn’t begin with Challenger. Challenger was one of many failures of a program dsigned to show our superirotiy to the Soviets and thei social system, despite the fact that the Soviets had preceded us in sending both an unmanned and a manned vehicle into space. The space race was not one we were going to lose, and so safety frequently took a back seat to our desire to stick a scientific thumb in the Soviet eye. Higginbotham begins by tracing all the mistakes that led to the horrific deaths of three astronauts during preparations for space flight in 1967. The American pattern was established: successful flugths led to arrogance; arrongace led to diminished worry tht something could go wrong; something then goes wrong, the program is halted then presses on and the sycle continues.
Successful moon flights led to complacency within NASA and its contractors, as well as dimninsiehd public interest. Cost-cutting becamse the order of the day, and NASA, desperate to remain in the public eye and to maintain its funding, makes unrealistic promises of large numbers of space missions. Even so, flughts are regularly canceled, and in order to demiostrate its value, its decided that a civilian, a schoolteacher, will fly on the space shuttle. Chrsita McAuliffe, a schoolteacher oin New Hampshire is chosen. As Higginbotham recoutns, she’s ideal, an all-American figure, charming, the perfect face for the program.
The elad up to the flight is so painful to read about, so skillfully and suspensefully told, that as the fatal moment approached I needed to put the book down. Theere were delays and NNASA and the contractors were being emabrassed. But engineers within the federal agency and Mortin Thiokol, the main contractor, were convinced that there was a fatal flaw in the O rigns on the fuel tanks. Fearful that their failure would cause an explosion, killing all aboard, attemoted up till the night ebfiore the flight ti have it canceled. But more concerned for protecting their reputations that the lives of the astronauts, the engineers were overruled. And two minutes into the flight, the astronauts had plunged into the sea.
An inquiry panel was formed almost immediately, nd so did the coverup. Fortunately, the panel was having none of it, and thanks to the great physicist Richard Feynman, the truth came out. Heads rolled, changes were made, and then complacency seyt in and on ----, yet another shuttle exploded, owing in large part to agency arrogance.

I highly recommend “Challenger.” Readers of all ages and interests will find something captivating in this nonfiction account of the US Space Shuttle program. If, like me, you were a child in 1986, you likely remember the horrific explosion that took the life of seven Americans including the first private citizen to go to space, teacher Christa McAuliffe. “Challenger” finds the right balance between an accurate accounting of facts and personal anecdotes that propel the harrowing story forward. I’m impressed with Higginbotham’s ability to explain complex engineering and technical aspects of the shuttle design in an easily accessible way. Most interesting to me was the series of poor management and decision making that lead to this catastrophic failure. All of us can find lessons to learn from “Challenger.”

I remember when this happened and it was so traumatic for a collect group of people..

This book is detailed and gives both an overall and a detailed explanation of what happened and why.

A very painful event, that even now, through this book feels palpable and sad.

Excellent writing.

Adam Higginbotham's Midnight in Chernobyl is one of the best non-fiction titles I have ever read. It was chockfull of details of and gripping to the last. I pushed a copy into the hands of every person I could convince to listen to me long enough to extol it's virtues.

I was worried that Challenger couldn't hold up to Midnight in Chernobyl, especially because I was a space addicted child who dreamed of working for NASA and had read a lot about the history of various missions, etc. No need to worry though. Higginbotham has returned with yet another exciting, gloriously informative stories. I was hooked from beginning to end. This would make an excellent father's day gift, especially for the history buff dads who enjoy science, in the vein of Sam Kean.

Now I can't wait to see what Higginbotham does next.

I wasn’t born when the Challenger accident occurred. However being an 80’s baby, I heard about it so often, it was as if I was. This book was so important for me to read because it tells the story I’ve heard hundreds of times from a fresh perspective.

This is a must read for anyone interested in the US space missions. For any space enthusiast, and for anyone seeking real answers to difficult questions.

Adam Higginbotham tackles the 1986 Space Shuttle disaster in his latest work of non-fiction, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space.

As he did in Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster, the author brings a historian's perspective and a novelist's narrative gifts to this epic – and imminently preventable – catastrophe.

Higginbotham tells the story from a variety of perspectives, including contractors whose warnings weren't heeded and the NASA employee who was the public address announcer for the launch. For those who remember the line "Obviously a major malfunction," as we saw the smoke trails from the explosion, this bit of the book is especially poignant.

In the nearly 40 years that have passed since the Challenger disaster, the names of the dead – other than Christa McAuliffe – may have faded from people's memories. But the author brings them all vividly alive on the page. We learn about their dreams and their foibles, and are reminded again of the incalculable loss.

This is an important piece of history, and a necessary reminder that hubris can be fatal.

*I received an early review copy from NetGalley.

Thank you Netgalley and Avid Reader Press for providing this ARC. Wow, this was great. I thought I knew so much about the Challenger tragedy, but apparently not. This is so well researched and in depth regarding the history of technical problems with the space shuttle fleet. The author also provides excellent background regarding NASA and the history of manned space flight which adds important context. Highly recommend this as a must read non-fiction.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for this arc. I was in elementary school at the time of the Challenger tragedy and like most kids, watched it live. The author did a fantastic job.

Absolutely extraordinary. I was not yet born for Challenger, but was in high school for the Columbia disaster and was horrified and fascinated by it. I am a space nerd, and an engineer: I knew that Challenger's problem was something about O-rings and the cold, and that a piece of insulation broke off and damaged the heat shield of Columbia; yet, I am embarrassed to admit how little I actually knew of the detailed history of the Shuttle program (which never seems to get the fanfare that the Mercury through Apollo era does).

This book changed that decisively. It is an excellent history of the Shuttle program leading up to the Challenger disaster (with a bit of prologue mentioning the earlier design of spaceplanes and, of course, Apollo 1, and a bit of epilogue touching on Columbia and the eventual shuttering of the program). It does lean a little heavily on the technical design challenges of the Shuttle, but, well, that's my industry, so I was really into the level of detail, and I don't think that part is inaccessible to the layman. But beyond the technical, it really brings home the tragedy of it all in an affecting and informative way. I was heartbroken by the human side of the story Higginbotham presents.

Thanks to Avid Reader and NetGalley for the ARC of this title.

Between this and Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster, Adam Higginbotham's now on my list of nonfiction must-pick-ups when they have a new book out.

I love when nonfiction reads like a thriller, and I'm a sucker for a well-researched account of recent historical events, like the author's previous book, anything Patrick Radden Keefe does, and Jeff Guinn's work on figures like Charles Manson and Jim Jones. This slots in nicely with all of these, and it even gave me the same this-was-all-so-preventable incandescent rage that Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing did last year, so that was nice.

This starts with the Apollo 1 disaster and shows how hubris and engineering failures made a failed space shuttle mission a matter of _when_, not if, but it's also a deeply human book that pulls in some wild details - an astronaut who wanted to play saxophone in space; an engineer haunted by one aeronautics failure desperate to prevent another; the weird process of trying to put civilians in space

This feels like a great Dad Book if you're trying to wean them off of Yet Another WWII Book, consider it this father's day.

Much like he did with nuclear power in his previous book, Higgenbottom covers not only the disaster, but what led up to it. He goes in detail about the space program, shuttle launches, and the disastrous mission itself. Sure to be a nonfiction book of the year for many.

Higginbotham possesses the unique ability to make even the most arcane, or complex, or mundane information engaging and accessible; fans of his previous work will not be disappointed with his latest triumph. A thorough, even-headed, and revelatory look at a pivotal but becoming-forgotten moment in American history.

Thank you Avid Reader Press, Netgalley, and Adam Higginbotham for an advanced copy of Challenger! Space disasters are a historical obsession of mine, and this is the third title on the Challenger disaster that I’ve read. I assumed I’d read it all, but this book proved me wrong.

I love the detailed history of toxic culture and deviance in NASA since before the Apollo missions. The author also goes into detail about the tragic Apollo 1 simulation that turned catastrophic on the launch pad, killing three of America’s most promising space cadets.

Readers also learn a ton not only about the Challenger crew members’ lives before space flight, but also the problems NASA faced building the fleet of Shuttles before they ever made it to the launch pad.

So many books about Challenger focus on the malfunctioning o-rings on the solid rocket boosters, but this book gives a much broader look at NASA’s culture and why the shuttle may have been doomed from its inception.

Fantastic read, and I learned a lot about a historical event that I’ve already studied extensively, which is super cool. Pub day is 5/14/24!

As nonfiction reporting goes, Challenger is as good as it gets. Higginbotham thoroughly treats the history of the American space program without talking down to the reader. The length of the work owes more to the subject matter than to the prolixity of the author. The complexity of the January 1986 explosion of the Challenger shuttle was given all of the nuance and sensitivity it deserved.

The time I spent reading Challenger raced by. I was so enrapt that I wished Higginbotham would have taken us up to the way things are now, including the present rivalry of Bezos and Musk, but you could say that space wouldn't permit it.

Sometimes books make me nervous. With Adam Higginbotham's Challenger, I worried there was no way it could reach the heights of his previous book, Midnight at Chernobyl. Great news, I had nothing to worry about.

Higginbotham can now be considered an expert at taking a tragedy and deconstructing it while engaging the reader at every turn. As someone who can easily get sleepy when I read too much science, this is no small feat to keep me focused. Challenger is the story of the space shuttle disaster in 1986. If you are an American, you either saw it happen or heard about it in school. Like Chernobyl, it is a major event in history which is not fully understood. Higginbotham seeks to fix that and does so.

This book will leave you heartbroken, tired, and absolutely enraged. Seven people died not because of the vagaries of nature but due to amazing human hubris. Many narratives of tragedies spend their page count on the disaster and the gory aftermath. Challenger spends the vast majority of the time explaining not why Challenger happened but leaving the reader wondering how it didn't happen much sooner. Higginbotham is one of the few writers who can make even a boring science discussion seem propulsive. In fact, the book almost feels like a horror story at certain points as the author clearly leaves clues on what will ultimately be more casualties than just the crew of the Challenger.

I am writing this in February of 2024, but I can guarantee this will be in my top 5 books of the year. It's just science.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Avid Reader Press.)

Adam Higginbotham has the remarkable power to write about well-known historic catastrophes and make me believe that somehow I can still change the outcome--I don't know how else to describe it. In his expansively researched and presented book "Challenger," Higginbotham somehow creates--as he did in his previous book, "Chernobyl"--an almost unbearable sense of suspense; he leads readers step by meticulous step towards a tragedy that we know is inevitable but that, as he plainly demonstrates, could have been prevented. "Challenger" is fascinating, infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure, as Higginbotham begins with the Apollo 1 launch pad fire debacle and the safeguards NASA put into place in its aftermath to try to ensure that an accident like that never happened again--and then scrupulously builds a case explaining the complicated scientific and petty bureaucratic reasons it did. Alongside this, he introduces each of the doomed men and women aboard Challenger--their backgrounds and families, their selection into NASA's astronaut training program (or, in the cases of Christa McAuliffe and Greg Jarvis, their selection as part of the Teacher-in-Space and Hughes Aircraft shuttle passenger contests) and their excited progress through the preparations for blastoff. Having set these two storylines in motion, Higginbotham steadily builds toward their tragic collision on the morning of January 28, 1986, when Challenger, despite many clear recommendations for grounding, lifts off into oblivion. I couldn't put "Challenger" down--it's riveting and essential.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Simon & Schuster for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for my honest review. Highly recommend.