A Zimmerman Bibliography

My Newest Book, released May 2008

• The Universe in a Mirror, the Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It. The book, released in May 2008 from Princeton University Press, is available for order. The book tells the story of the men and women who conceived, built, and saved the Hubble Space Telescope. Their effort, which often involved significant personal sacrifice, not only gave us all a spectacular glimpse into the unknown, it forever changed our perception of the universe.

  

  "Zimmerman demonstrates the importance of vision, perservenance, politics, and good luck in getting this national telescope constructed, fixed, and operated. He also illustrates, somewhat poignantly at times, the human costs and disappointments that came up along the way." -- J. Michael Shull, University of Colorado at Boulder.

  To put it simply, the Hubble Space Telescope is the telescope that would not die. On a fundamental human level, Hubble epitomized the inevitable and irresistible lure of the unknown. Everyone involved in the telescope's creation knew that a telescope above the atmosphere was going to see things that had never been seen before. No one could resist that promise.

  Read the first chapter!

  Read the Wall Street Journal review by Glenn Reynolds.

  Read the Wall Street Journal article by Daniel Henninger.

  Read the New York Times review by Dennis Overbye.

  Named to Booklist's Top Ten Sci-Tech Books for 2008.

  Named to the long list of thirteen books eligible to win the 2009 Royal Society Prizes for Science Books. See their review.

  Read my thoughts upon taking the Page 99 test for page 99 of "The Universe in a Mirror."

  Read my thoughts about life, exploration, and guns at the Powell's Books Technica Q&A.

Some biographical information

• I have not only been fortunate to write about some of the most exciting moments in space history, I have also had the great and grand fortune to actually go where no one has gone before....more.

Books by Robert Zimmerman

• Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel

  Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award
  of the American Astronautical Society.

  "Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read."--Arthur C. Clarke

  More information about Leaving Earth.

• Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8

  "With great intelligence and an eye for enjoyable reading, Zimmerman highlights a period in American history when everyday heroes still existed and we had not lost our capacity to be awed by scientific achievement."--Publishers Weekly

  More information about Genesis.

• The Chronological Encylopedia of Discoveries in Space

  "Once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. It certainly deserves the name of Encyclopedia -- complete, accurate and vividly interesting."--Ben Bova

  More information about The Chronological Encyclopedia

My Space Watch column: Nov. 2004 - June 2005

• Some favorite columns and why
• The last column: History's moment of truth
• Last four columns
• Archive

Magazine Articles and Broadcast Media

• including essays and scripts written for Natural History, Air & Space Magazine, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, The Science Channel, The Sciences, Invention & Technology, American History, and many others.

Recent and upcoming appearances:

• Radio: June 28, 2009, 9:30-11:30 pm (EDT), Shadows in the Dark webcast radio show. Webcast also available at Dark Plains Radio.
• Radio: June 29, 12:05 am (EDT) the John Batchelor Show, WABC 770-AM, New York, New York, KFI 640-AM, Los Angeles, California, KSFO-AM 560, San Francisco, California.
  

• Radio: July 5, 2009, 2:00 pm (CDT), with Steve Thomson, WCCO-AM, Minnapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota.
  
• Lecture: July 8, 2009, 7:30 pm, Westminster Astronomical Society, Bear Branch Nature Center, 300 John Owings Road, Westminster, Maryland.
  
• Lecture: July 18, 2009, 1 pm, the Vic Clark Chapter, #91, Vienna, Virginia, of the Quarter Century Wireless Association.
  

• Past Appearances

There's a land where the mountains are nameless,
   And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
   And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
   There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There's a land--oh, it beckons and beckons,
   And I want to go back--and I will.

There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting;
   It's luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
   So much as just finding the gold.
It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
   It's the forests where silence has lease;
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
   It's the stillness that fills me with peace.

From Robert Service's
"The Spell of the Yukon"