Tells the almost forgotten story of the first manned U. S. spaceflight, Freedom 7, flown by Cdr. Alan Shepard, Jr., for NASA and the United StatesBased on exclusive interviews with Shepard and several of the surviving leading players in the programExamines the Mercury program and Shepard's flight in the context of the space race with the former USSRIncludes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Colin Burgess's first book, "The Diggers of Colditz" was published simultaneously in the U.K. and Australia in 1985.  His next few books were on the Australian prisoner-of-war experience and then he turned his efforts to writing about his principal interest: human space exploration. Burgess has written a number of books on the subject for the University of Nebraska Press and Springer-Praxis.  The books he has written or co-authored for Springer-Praxis are "NASA's Scientist-Astronauts," "Animals in Space," "The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team," and "Selecting the Mercury Seven."  Recently finished the copyediting/typesetting process is his latest book for Springer-Praxis, "Moon Bound: Choosing and Preparing NASA's Lunar Astronauts."  In the interim he has also worked as series editor and sometimes author for the Outward Odyssey set of 12 books on the social history of space exploration for the University of Nebraska Press.