Leadership Moments from NASA

Fascinating. I love Nasa. I love Space. I LOVE Science. I'll adopt this title for a course curriculum in my classroom, for sure. If you are interested, at all, in anything space travel-related, read this book. Loved it. 5/5 stars.

Dr. Dave Williams & Elizabeth Howell have put together a wonderfully rich book, filled with in-depth considerations of key moments in NASA's history, and their significance for the company's leadership and wider culture.

Looking back to the origins of NASA and across the span of five decades of space exploration, Dave Williams - former astronaut and director of Space & Life Sciences at NASA himself - brings together exclusive interviews with the 'big names' of space exploration, with the key figures in corporate culture and leadership decisions, to showcase the lessons learned from critical moments. There have been, and always will be, seemingly insurmountable challenges at NASA, and this book is a fantastic insight into the ways in which leaders have prioritised and resolved tasks, how they they decided what to do when nobody had done it before, and how organisational resilience was built up into a culture of highly competent, safe, and innovative engineers.

In LEADERSHIP MOMENTS FROM NASA, by Dr. Dave Williams and Elizabeth Howell, a close examination of critical moments in NASA's history provides clarity on how NASA made key choices in leadership that helped to maintain the high standards of work ethic and technological advancement that the country knows to be a huge part of who NASA is. The books posits that only through the proper leadership could NASA weather the monumental challenges it faces over the years, from waning public interest and unnecessary Cold War competition, to fatal accidents that forced everyone at NASA to reevaluate how everything is done.
The book digs deep into the major accidents in NASA history and looks to the leaders and leadership style that was implemented. The technical description of the events are complicated and difficult to comprehend for the layman, but I think the authors did a good job of breaking down the technical aspects so that the reader can accurately absorb the information. The people involved in these historic moments are really special and the book does an excellent job of look at those leaders and what they did to get NASA through challenging times. The book jumps back an forth in time some and while it made some sense from a storytelling standpoint, the key players and where they are in their careers is hard to keep up with. Time is spent talking about mentorship and lead positions changing hands, but when the book jumps out of linear progression, a difficulty arises about who in these leadership roles at the moment being discussed.
Overall, a fascinating book, especially for those of us interested in space travel. The authors know their stuff and I felt an urge to read more about certain people and events when I finished.