Author(s): David Scott & Alexei Leonov with Christine Toomey

Non-fiction

With a Foreword by Neil Armstrong and an Introduction by Tom Hanks.

In this unique dual autobiography, astronaut David Scott and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov recount their exceptional lives and careers spent on the cutting edge of science and space exploration. With missions fraught with perilous risks, and each space programme touched by tragedy, these parallel tales of adventure and heroism read like a modern-day thriller.

Before training to be the USSR's first man on the Moon, Leonov became the first man to walk in space. It was a feat that won him a place in history, but almost cost him his life. A year later, in 1966, David Scott and Neil Armstrong's spacecraft, Gemini 8, tumbled out of control whilst orbiting the Earth. Surviving against dramatic odds, pilot Armstrong and co-pilot Scott went on to fly their own lunar missions: Armstrong to command Apollo 11 and become the first man to walk on the Moon, and Scott to command the most complex expedition in the history of exploration, Apollo 15. Spending three days on the Moon, Scott became the seventh man to walk on its breathtaking surface.

Marking a new age of USA/USSR co-operation, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project brought Scott and Leonov together, finally ending the Cold War silence and building a friendship that would last for decades.

Written from two very personal perspectives, Two Sides of the Moon recounts the adventures of two men who risked their lives to push forward the frontier of man's celestial exploration.