Carrying the Fire

Michael Collins was one of the three men aboard Apollo 11 when it flew to the moon in July 1969, alongside Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. This is his own account of that mission, told in the first person and in a personal voice.

The book is a memoir that looks back over his whole flying life. It begins with his first flight experiences in the air force and continues through his years as a test pilot, before arriving at the Apollo 11 mission and his space walk.

Collins writes about the drama of the flight and its beauty, and he finds humor in it too. He also writes about the pleasure of flying itself, and the book carries a strong sense of what it is like to move through the air for a living.

He saw the fragile Earth from the far side of the moon, and that view gives him a different way of thinking about time, light and movement. Reading it is like hearing an astronaut reflect on a landmark of the twentieth century, with the event treated as both a technical feat and a spiritual one.