![]() From Auk I (top altitude, six feet), through Auk XXXI (top altitude, 31,000 feet), the boys experiment with nozzles, fins and, most of all, fuel, graduating from a basic black powder to ""rocket candy"" (melted potassium chlorate and sugar) to ""Zincoshine"" (zinc, sulfur, moonshine). After an initial, destructive try involving 12 cherry bombs, Sonny and his cronies set up the Big Creek Missile Agency (BCMA). When Sputnik inspires ""Sonny"" with an interest in rockets, she sees it not as a hobby but as a way to escape the mines. Hickam's father is Coalwood, W.Va.'s mine superintendent, whose devotion to the mine is matched only by his wife's loathing for it. On the other hand, it's about a dying way of life in a coal town where the days are determined by the rhythms of the mine and the company that controls everything and everybody. On one level, it's the story of a teenage boy who learns about dedication, responsibility, thermodynamics and girls. ![]() ![]() In his debut, Hickam, a retired NASA engineer, walks that line beautifully. Too much of the former makes it overly familiar too much of the latter makes readers ask what the story has to do with them. Great memoirs must balance the universal and the particular. ![]()
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