The man who was Mission Control during the early days of NASA has written a fascinating autobiography called Flight, a book that takes us back to a time when space exploration was still a fledgling project. As one of the leaders of the army of pencil pushers that made the space program happen, Chris Kraft, the chief of flight operations for the moon launches who later became head of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, had a unique vantage point. Full of insight into the technical, political and familial aspects of putting a man into space, his book is a delight to read, a memoir that conjures up all the optimism and bravado of a younger America.

Flight begins in the Tidewater region of Virginia, where Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. grew up a hard-working child of the Depression. He attended college at Virginia Tech, then took a job testing aircraft for the government, eventually joining a new organization called NASA. Kraft does a good job of conveying the intricacies, personalities, excitement and frustration that characterized a career with the organization. He is also surprisingly blunt, singling out some astronauts as incompetent, some as sycophants and some as cool and intelligent. He gives similar assessments of his coworkers; at this point in his life, he clearly has no reason to pull his punches.

Indeed, Kraft writes with honesty throughout Flight. He has little patience with bureaucracy, either governmental or scientific, and blames both for the delays that kept the United States from putting the first man into space, and for subsequent decisions that have kept us from returning to the moon for the past three decades. If Kraft had his way, America would have had a base on Mars years ago. Part of what makes his memoir a genuine and refreshing read is that Kraft doesn’t spare himself from criticism. The three Apollo astronauts that perished in an on-pad fire clearly trouble him to this day. Yet, despite such bitter losses, he takes obvious pride in what he and his comrades accomplished. Kraft also seems to savor the title bestowed on him "Flight." Sometimes a mark of respect is all that we desire, and Chris Kraft certainly deserves the respect of us all.

James Neal Webb would hitch a ride on the Space Shuttle in a heartbeat.

J.D. Dolan’s latest autobiographical work exposes the author’s journey from a young child’s dream world of innocence and extreme brotherly adulation into the sobering, bitter realization and loss associated with adulthood and tragedy. Dolan was born into an all-American family, though 11 years younger than his brother. Along with his two older sisters, his brother practically raised him. As a result, the brother became for Dolan an idolized figure along the lines of John Wayne. But as American idols live large and hard, occasionally, so too do they fall. Sadly, this is the case with Dolan’s brother. From the beginning, everything he sees in his brother is the definition of cool the Corvette, motorcycles, the Marlboros and Old Spice, the guns, and the girls and Dolan’s infatuated recollections of him are to the point and real. In my earliest memories of my brother, writes Dolan, he’d seemed to me a gigantic figure, a grown-up, an inscrutable god. His vivid descriptions of family life and growing up in the shadow of a restless soul give readers a glimpse of this larger than life figure coming of age, being shipped out to Vietnam, and returning home more mature, quieter, older. Suddenly, the deep brotherly bond becomes an almost painfully mute relationship.

The progression from a healthy, happy family in the midst of the American dream into years of self-imposed silence and growing distance between members is told as if this fate is common to all families to a certain degree. The innocence of youth and physical health steadily decompose, and readers are left feeling the tragic loss which has been Dolan’s all too real experience. Phoenix: A Brother’s Life captures the love and admiration some brothers feel for each other, as well as the changes they undergo as they mature into individuals with separate lives. It would be more comforting in the end (though certainly less realistic) to see something rise out of the ashes, something other than a relief that suffering is finally over, and only a numb feeling of loss remains. Jamie McAlister writes from his home in Charleston, South Carolina.

For one fleeting, “iridescent” moment, that crucial summer of 1972, June Sprigg considered committing to the Shaker way of life. In a way, she has. She didn’t, of course, sign the Covenant; even if she wanted to, the Shakers no longer accepted converts. Since celibacy formed an important tenant of their faith, and membership had peaked more than a century earlier, only a few of their number remained. In that remnant mostly female and faltering physically faith, duty, and love burned as brightly as ever, igniting in the then-19-year-old Sprigg a hunger to discover and internalize their quality of contentment.

The author’s interest in Shaker workmanship and a curiosity about the Believers themselves first dawned during childhood vacations, but it was during that first summer at a Shaker community in Canterbury, New Hampshire, that the direction of her life changed forever. Sprigg searched photo albums and the absorbing journals of Shaker Elders, she guided tours, and immersed herself in the aura of days long past yet startlingly present. There, she recorded her observations in journal entries and drawings; there, Simple Gifts finds its genesis less in researched information than through actually experiencing the atmosphere and personalities of the Shaker life.

With Simple Gifts, Sprigg continues to enliven the history of this unique tradition and its followers. “Hands to work, hearts to God” shapes the Shaker ethic, in which the community is emphasized over the individual; precision is paramount in craftsmanship, in relationships, and in personal actions; technology is embraced when it leads to proficiency and product, rejected where it threatens unity.

Perhaps dearest to young June while in Canterbury were Lillian, a gifted musician, 80 years a Shaker, who had come as a teenager for physical healing and unexpectedly found her calling, and Bertha, consummate cook, who functioned more comfortably as a “simple Kitchen Sister” than in leadership roles thrust upon her as Eldress. Gertrude, Eldress recently transplanted from the Sabbathday Lake community, was a night-owl, unfailingly late for breakfast, but forgiven not only because forgiveness came readily to the Shaker spirit, but also for her unflagging charm. Her malapropisms provided continual amusement.

That summer of 1972 changed Sprigg’s life, and she, in turn, enriches others’ lives by perpetuating the record of this remarkable sect through her writing and sketches. In Simple Gifts, the author’s crystalline imagery, insightful observations, and gentle portraits transport the reader to a serenity not often achieved. With Sprigg, readers walk a rich path. Perhaps, with such a knowledgeable tour guide, readers will explore deeper possibilities for their own life experiences.

Reviewed by Evelyn Minshull.

It is a startling coincidence to have, in one season, the appearance of not one but two memoirs about William Shawn, the former editor of the New Yorker Ved Mehta’s Remembering Mr. Shawn’s New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing and Lillian Ross’s Here but Not Here: A Love Story but perhaps more interesting is that, while each is an elegy for Shawn, the two books couldn’t be more different.

The differences make Mehta’s and Ross’s memoirs complementary; indeed, alone, each is only a partial picture of Shawn, the New Yorker’s editor-in-chief for more than three decades. In his book, Mehta, a staff writer at the magazine from 1961-1994, depicts the platonic but intense affection between a writer and his editor. In her book, Ms. Ross, also a longtime New Yorker staff writer, delivers without apology the confessional tale of her over 40-year- long affair with the married Shawn. Mehta’s memoir which is as gorgeously written as his magazine pieces and his previous 20 books (Remembering is the eighth in an autobiographical series entitled Continents of Exile) is a lament not only for Shawn but for a bygone era of chivalrous good intentions and courtly behavior in the literary world, an era of editorial paternalism and excellent manners. Shawn’s New Yorker which lasted from 1952-1987, when Shawn, at the age of 77, was asked by the new owner of the magazine to resign was less a business than a family, peopled by the likes of J.D. Salinger, John Updike, Renata Adler, A.J. Liebling, St. Clair McKelway, and Maeve Brennan, writers to whom Shawn demonstrated fatherly allegiance. Not only did Shawn respond like a "Talmudic scholar," to his writers’ work, says Mehta, he frequently ministered to their more personal needs including, in some cases, forgiving them their messy debts and hospitalizing them when mental illness or alcoholism overtook them. In Here but Not Here, Ms. Ross, covers similar historic ground, but laments more directly the loss of Shawn as a person. Ross’s purpose is to make the reader see the real Shawn hopelessly in love, plagued by phobias, blocked in his own writing, and overwhelmed by his own invisibility as an editor and a human being. "Responsible as he was, toward the magazine and the lives of all the creative people involved with it," Ross writes, "attuned as he made himself to all their frailties and disappointments and successes and joys," Shawn "could do nothing to help himself. He wanted someone to know and believe there was more to him; he was desperate to feel alive." In late 20th-century America, when the line between the public and the private has become utterly blurred, Mehta’s is the decidedly public memoir of Shawn and Ross’s the utterly personal. Ross’s book complicates and completes Mehta’s reverent portraiture, but raises the question: How is one to reconcile the two William Shawns Mehta’s Algonquin-frequenting, dignified father figure, and Ross’s obsessive lover, who would leave his editorial desk at night and stand across the street from Ross’s fifth floor apartment, staring up for hours at her lighted window? In the end, these memoirs are twin halves not only of Shawn, but of an era in American culture the early to mid 1960s a time of public good taste and, behind the scenes, some very private secrets. Reviewed by Julie Checkoway.

It is a startling coincidence to have, in one season, the appearance of not one but two memoirs about William Shawn, the former editor of the New Yorker Ved Mehta’s Remembering Mr. Shawn’s New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing and Lillian Ross’s Here but Not Here: A Love Story (Random House, $22.50, 0375501193) but perhaps more interesting is that, while each is an elegy for Shawn, the two books couldn’t be more different.

The differences make Mehta’s and Ross’s memoirs complementary; indeed, alone, each is only a partial picture of Shawn, the New Yorker’s editor-in-chief for more than three decades. In his book, Mehta, a staff writer at the magazine from 1961-1994, depicts the platonic but intense affection between a writer and his editor. In her book, Ms. Ross, also a longtime New Yorker staff writer, delivers without apology the confessional tale of her over 40-year- long affair with the married Shawn. Mehta’s memoir which is as gorgeously written as his magazine pieces and his previous 20 books (Remembering is the eighth in an autobiographical series entitled Continents of Exile) is a lament not only for Shawn but for a bygone era of chivalrous good intentions and courtly behavior in the literary world, an era of editorial paternalism and excellent manners. Shawn’s New Yorker which lasted from 1952-1987, when Shawn, at the age of 77, was asked by the new owner of the magazine to resign was less a business than a family, peopled by the likes of J.D. Salinger, John Updike, Renata Adler, A.J. Liebling, St. Clair McKelway, and Maeve Brennan, writers to whom Shawn demonstrated fatherly allegiance. Not only did Shawn respond like a "Talmudic scholar," to his writers’ work, says Mehta, he frequently ministered to their more personal needs including, in some cases, forgiving them their messy debts and hospitalizing them when mental illness or alcoholism overtook them. In Here but Not Here, Ms. Ross, covers similar historic ground, but laments more directly the loss of Shawn as a person. Ross’s purpose is to make the reader see the real Shawn hopelessly in love, plagued by phobias, blocked in his own writing, and overwhelmed by his own invisibility as an editor and a human being. "Responsible as he was, toward the magazine and the lives of all the creative people involved with it," Ross writes, "attuned as he made himself to all their frailties and disappointments and successes and joys," Shawn "could do nothing to help himself. He wanted someone to know and believe there was more to him; he was desperate to feel alive." In late 20th-century America, when the line between the public and the private has become utterly blurred, Mehta’s is the decidedly public memoir of Shawn and Ross’s the utterly personal. Ross’s book complicates and completes Mehta’s reverent portraiture, but raises the question: How is one to reconcile the two William Shawns Mehta’s Algonquin-frequenting, dignified father figure, and Ross’s obsessive lover, who would leave his editorial desk at night and stand across the street from Ross’s fifth floor apartment, staring up for hours at her lighted window? In the end, these memoirs are twin halves not only of Shawn, but of an era in American culture the early to mid 1960s a time of public good taste and, behind the scenes, some very private secrets. Reviewed by Julie Checkoway.

One of my favorite characters in fiction is the Storekeeper in Phil Stong’s 1932 novel, State Fair. The Storekeeper is a cautious, skeptical fellow who believes that “Heaven ordains all things for the worst but more mischievously than tragically.” So don’t get too cocky: Don’t take the chains off your tires (it’s 1932 rural America, remember) just because it’s spring. Heaven may have plenty of mud in store and definitely will if you do take them off.

I’ve probably spent too much of my allotted span reading second and third-rate fiction, but I thought of the Storekeeper while reading Calvin Trillin’s Family Man. In these ruminations/memoirs about family life, Trillin holds, perhaps only half-jocularly, to a similar belief, the Evil Eye: “People who treat the Evil Eye with some respect can tell you that anyone handing out advice about family and thus implying that he and his family are so blessed, so close to perfection that it behooves them to share with others the secret of their success is asking for trouble.” Trillin skirts trouble with humor and dispenses only one really solid bit of advice to prospective parents: “Try to get one that doesn’t spit up.” Beyond that, he says, “your children are either the center of your life or they’re not, and the rest is commentary.” The rest is indeed commentary on the obvious fact that his two daughters, Abigail and Sarah, have been the center of his and his wife Alice’s life and exceedingly funny commentary it is. Though this book will be enjoyed by anyone who appreciates humor above the level of the hotfoot (not such a huge crowd, at that, in Adam Sandler’s America), it will be especially appreciated by anyone who happens to share Trillin’s prejudices and outlook.

For instance, in commenting on his family’s viewing and marching in the free-form, amateurish Halloween parades in their neighborhood of Greenwich Village, he says, “My interest in parades is usually limited by my failure to appreciate floats,” which rigidly separate paraders and spectators.

Exactly! Why, with such an attitude, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear him say that clowns are not funny. He doesn’t, but he comes close in disparaging most children’s theater, in which “children would shrink into the corner of their seats as foolishly dressed people on-stage favored them with stupid pratfalls or double entendres that would make ,musicals, like Pippin and West Side Story, that trigger both laughs and a child’s sense of awe.

Though he might not be charmed by the comparison, as a humorist Trillin is a lot like H. Allen Smith, of blessed memory and such titles as Low Man on a Totem Pole. His approach, it might be said, is one thing leads to another. A chapter that starts out discussing changes in wedding conventions leads to the time he didn’t have a spare hand with which to comfort his wife in the delivery room because one hand was holding the wallet he was advised not to leave in the locker while the other was holding up the scrub pants with played-out elastic he was given to wear.

Throughout, there is a noticeable strain of the amusing old duffer (even when younger) whom the daughters have to keep in line, of every sitcom sappy pappy from Chester A. Riley to Archie Bunker. But then, he admits that he tends toward the sitcom tone of voice when writing about domestic matters.

Behind it, though, is a definite bedrock of sophisticated common sense, revealed in the remark that both he and Alice “had upbringings whose essential squareness we valued.” It’s no accident that their daughters, though born in that era, did not end up with names like Moon Unit.

Though Trillin has lived all his adult life in New York City, “Alice and I both found something off-putting in New York kids we heard about who seemed not just overprivileged but oversavvy,” and so from time to time they would take the girls “back home” for a “booster shot” of his native Kansas City, which he concedes has never left him.

Because, he writes, “I believe that the only time parents are absolutely relaxed about the safety and well-being of their child, of any age, is when that child is under the parents’ own roof, fast asleep.” That’s one truism that all parents whose children are the center of their life can say “amen” to, regardless of the state of their sense of humor. Reviewed by Roger Miller.

vid portrait of a time of flux in an ancient country, Peter Hessler’s River Town is a moving account of his experiences as a foreigner or waiguoren in small-town China. Hessler, who spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in a city called Fuling, a Yangtze River town in southwestern China, taught English and American literature at Fuling Teachers College, and the classroom provides the backdrop for many of the events that comprise his impressive first book. Hessler provides lucid narration of his time at the college, recounting moments of humor and gravity in wonderful, precise detail. Many of his shy, eager students are of the peasant stock that populates the remote countryside, and some of them have taken on American names. His classes contain a male student named Daisy, as well as a young woman who calls herself Keller, in honor of Helen Keller. Teaching always a reciprocal process is especially so in this case, as eye-opening for Hessler as it is for his pupils. Preoccupied with politics, the young people are diehard Communists, and party rhetoric invades analyses of Hamlet and Robin Hood. With the finesse of a great teacher, Hessler manages to steer his students in more appropriate directions. “I wasn’t so enthusiastic about Shakespeare’s becoming a party spokesman,” he writes.

Mixed in with Hessler’s account of his teaching duties in Fuling are history-making events like the return of Hong Kong to the control of the mainlaind Chinese government and the death of Deng Xiaoping. Blending these momentous happenings with everyday incidents, Hessler delivers a balanced look at his time as a stranger in a strange land. In the end, for the author, the townspeople become a source of both animosity and support. While he experiences regular heckling because he is a foreigner, Hessler also makes friends among the restaurateurs whose establishments he frequents. He even spends the night before Chinese New Year with the family of one of the restaurant owners. “They knew that I was alone on the holiday, and I was their friend; nothing else mattered,” Hessler writes. “They were simply big-hearted people and that was the best meal I ever had in China.” Eliza McGraw writes from Maryland.