SPUTNIK The Shock of the Century

In an already-fearful age, the Soviets' launching of Sputnik in 1957 ramped up the Cold War to whole new degrees of paranoia. We'd already entered the Atomic Age, and the concept of space travel fueled visions of an apocalyptic outcome. For this reason, Jerry Carrier's dead-serious delivery is utterly appropriate as he recounts the exhaustive history of the U.S. Space Program in the fifties—in the name of which President Eisenhower, rivaling more modern presidents, said, "Deficit be damned!" Carrier's austere enunciation helps make sense of an era when space-age technology, including new weapons—missiles, for instance—was accelerating at, literally, a supersonic rate. J.S.H. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2008]