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Editorial Review Product Description
lan Shepard was the brashest, cockiest, and most flamboyant of America’s original Mercury Seven, but he was also regarded as the best. Intense, colorful, and dramatic—the man who hit a golf ball on the moon—he was among the most private of America’s public figures and, until his death in 1998, he guarded the story of his life zealously.
Light This Candle, based on Neal Thompson’s exclusive access to private papers and interviews with Shepard’s family and closest friends—including John Glenn, Wally Schirra, and Gordon Cooper—offers a riveting, action-packed account of Shepard’s life. Among the first men to fly off aircraft carriers, he was one of the most fearless test pilots. He endured long separations from his devoted wife and three daughters to fly dangerous missions, working his way up the ranks despite clashes with authority over his brazen flying maneuvers and penchant for risky pranks. Hugely competitive, he beat out John Glenn for the first Mercury spaceflight and then overcame a rare illness to return to space again on Apollo 14.
He took every challenge head-on and seemed to win every time.
Long overdue, Light This Candle is a candid and inspiring account of a bold American life. ... Read more Customer Reviews (24) 
Well balanced strenghts and weakness of Alan Shepard. Unnessesary profanity
Light This Candle is a good book on Alan Shepard. Its well balanced describing Shepard's strengths and accomplishments but also describes his weakness and dark side. Its 446 pages...399 pages of actual reading.Good pictures too. Its well written and fast paced. You wont get board reading this book.
I really liked the part of Shepard earning his gold Navy Aviator wings by finally having to land 6 times on an aircraft carrier. Shepard's father in an Army Colonel uniform is there to see him do it and take pictures. Both men are so proud. I'm ex Navy. On the carrier USS Independence CV 62 I used to make LOX for the fliers and sometimes watched the planes on CC TV as the pilots landed on the carrier. So dangerous for both the pilots and flight deck crew. Night landing in bad weather on a carrier is the supreme accomplishment skill of a pilot. Shepard was one of the first to do it.
We see Shepard accepted to the Annapolis Navy Academy.Alan had a sense of humor and played pranks on upperclassmen and always thought he was as good as them or better. He puts on muscle on his slender frame and trains so hard to get on the varsity rowing team. Alan steals Louise from her boyfriend, takes her to the big Letterman's ball and eventually marries her. Alan graduated in the middle of his class as he didn't try 100% and wanted to chase woman, party and have fun. He graduated in 3 years because of WW2.
He is a loving husband when he is home. Louise and him raise a fine family. However when onNavy assignments he chases women and hasaffairs. Louise knew he was unfaithful but both loved each other and stayed married for over 50 years.Alan loved fast cars, fast women, drinking, whoring around with his fly buddies and grabbed as much fun and gusto in life he could.
Shepard'smetal is tested in WW2 on a destroyer. He is assigned as a gunnery officer and sees lots of Kamikaze Japanese attacks. So much war horror. His unit is decorated. Eventually he gets pilot training but almost gets bumped out for not performing well. He takes private lessons and gets his private pilot license and then settles down and concentrates and finally does much better.He passes andearns his wings with 6 carrier landings all perfect. He misses his chance for air combat action in Korea. His future friend and competitor John Glenn shoots down 3 Migs.
Alan gets selected to Pax the Navy's test pilot program. He flies many different fast jets and becomes one of the Navy's best pilots. He is a show off hot dog that almost gets court marshaled for flying low and showing off. Throughout his career Shepard made friends with powerful people. His flying friend saves Shepard from the wrath of an Admiral that wanted him thrown out of the Navy.
Alan sees Sputnik in the sky and thinks to get in the new space program. He is selected as one of the original Mercury 7 and becomes America's first man in space. John Glenn is furious as he wanted to be number 1. We see Shepard as extremely competitive, cocky thinking he is the best of the best with a gigantic ego. The fact was he probably was the best.
Alan fought a hearing disease that had him grounded for years in the space program. Later he gets operated on and is cleared to fly. He is so competitive and cutthroat. After much training and internal political bumping other astronauts is the commander of Apollo 14 and is number 5 on the moon. He helps in experiments and taking very old rock samples. He is the oldest (47) to be on the moon and busts his butt working on the moon. He is exhausted. Such courage and determination. A true hero. He is famous for his moon golf shot. Many of the Apollo flights are described. Fascinating stuff.
The book has manymore great passages of Shepard. Shepard advances in rank and eventually becomes a Rear Admiral. Shepard retires. The Navy is pissed. They wanted him to stay in and have a a high profile position.Alan becomes a wealthy business man and finally starts to mellow out and opening up to people. He does lots of charity work and gives lots of money to a charity for killed Astronaut's wifes and kids and other charities. Alan and Louise plays lots of golf, travel and are friends with many celebrities and powerful people.Sheppard gets sick, fights leukemia and passes away at 74. His loving Louise wife of over 50 years dies of a heart attack at 5PM on a plane 5 weeks after Alan dies. This is when Alan always called Louise from work letting her know he was OK. Eerie.
Being ex Navy I'm used to profanity and most times it does not offend me. Thompson's book has some profanity to make it macho. The book is good enough to not need it.As a 13 year old I hero worshipped the astronauts. Maybe my grandkids will too. I know they will be exposed to profanity but its not necessary to see the F bomb and more in this book. Ill keep it in the adult section of the family library until their Mom says its OK for them to read it.
Alan Shepard was NO saint and much of his actions I do not approve of and I would not want my kids growing up like that. However he was a true hero with many accomplishments and charity work I would be extremely proud of. A complex man who enjoyed life and grabbed all the gusto he could. Recommend this book 4 stars
Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard-America's First Spaceman (Hardcover)-Great Gossip!
I feel this great book rates only four stars (rather than five) only because some of the technical information was badly in error. It is clear to me that this book is for folks interested in the "astronaut human relations" aspects of the Mercury program and is filled with lots of great gossip about our original seven astronauts.I read WE SEVEN when it was first published in 1962 and it was pure NASA "PR" as far as granting grades to the astronauts for "WORKING AND PLAYING WELL WITH OTHERS". Although technically, WE SEVEN was a very perfect book, NASA PR ruled in those early days. We now know that the astronauts were very human and although willing to put their lives on the line, capable of making an error at times.
Since this book was very enjoyable to read I give it four stars. I do not recommend it for people who will get distracted by the erroneous technical information it contains, which reflects negatively on the authorsknowledge of space science and orbital mechanics.
Great gossip includes:
1) When Shepard was selected by NASA for the first suborbital flight, Glenn went on a letter writing campaign to NASA managers to be substituted for Shepard. Glenn was really upset with the selection and Shepard's alleged womanizing!
2) When Shepard worked with Slayton as managers, they bumped Cooper so Shepard could jump line for a flight to the Moon.
3) Cooper quit NASA partially as a result of Shepard's line jumping.
4) Scott Carpenter was essentially drummed out of the astronaut core as a result of his (250 mile) overshoot, and a particular flight controller who was very unhappy with Carpenter's performance.
5) Much more!
Interesting Tid Bits and Lot's of Inaccuracies
I was looking forward to reading this bioagraphy having read most of the biographies of the American Astronauts that are out there along with many histories of the Space Program. Having grown up in the 60's and 70's I also followed the program intently. However, upon reading this I was both disappointed and sceptical about the accuracy of what the book contained. Factual error after error constantly gnawed away at any faith that what I was reading was to be believed. Others have pointed out errors I missed like Grissom's pick up though I suspected things weren't as I recalled (I knew there was more than one helicopter), so I'll add these corrections: The developement of the Saturn 5 was not a result of the Apollo 1 fire ( the Saturn 5 was always the vehicle intended for the lunar flights and were being built); Glenn's landing bag did,'t deploy (this is never made clear); the Soviets did not rendezvous two two man spacecraft ( they only launched two single passenger Vostoks in similar orbital planes that resulted in their passing within a few miles of each other and the Gemini 8 docking is never mentioned). The author has obviously read most of the same books I have and and used them for most of his research and many incidents recounted bore a striking resemblance to scenes from Tom Hank's "From the Earth To the Moon" series.
All in all a bit of a disappointment
Hugely redundant, often incorrect
Not much about Al Shepard that isn't already in other books
and movies. And just plain wrong on obvious things like
Grissom's pickup --which is on tape. How do you screw
something like that up? Short on technical details
and a lot of rehash on the Glen rivalry.
The constant repetitive mentioning of Al's sexual business is a bit weird.
Especially since only two real instances are mentioned in the book,
and neither of them involved sex. The supposed suppressed T.J. scandal
(John Glenn saves the day) is total horsecrap too, never happened.
The Highs, Lows, and In-Betweens of Alan B. Shepard
Surprise of surprises. Amid the clutter of hastily-written self-serving memoirs from the early days of the space program, finally there appears something akin to solid history and literary proficiency. Neal Thompson was a Baltimore reporter when Alan Shepard died in 1998 of leukemia. Assigned to write an obituary, Thompson discovered that no first rate biography of the United State's first spaceman was then in print. Sensing an opportunity, Thompson, a free lance writer, began a six-year research project and produced a highly respectable treatment of a very private man. What had been known about Shepard were primarily his great successes and his notable shortcomings. Johnson tackles the great middle--and the puzzle that was Alan Shepard now begins to make sense.
In truth, there is probably misunderstanding about all of the early astronaut heroes, as if each was assigned a role in a bigger cosmic drama. Scotty Carpenter will always be the house philosopher, Gordo Cooper the hotdog, Gus Grissom the curmudgeon. Shepard's role was to be first, the best, the winner of a grueling marathon to ride the Redstone rocket--tiny by today's standards--for fifteen minutes on May 5, 1961. Given the unpredictability of the rockets of that era, the greater risk to the astronaut was on the ground than in space. This fact was appreciated in 1961, and being chosen number one was a statement from his superiors about his fortitude as much as his mastery of flying and technology.
Alan Shepard was born in 1923 in Derry, NH, to a somewhat removed, demanding father. Young Shepard inherited a fierce competitiveness and an independence that allowed him to pursue personal goals with little concern about his impression on others. This latter quality, to his advantage, is what set him apart from his archrival John Glenn, who did worry about public relations. Shepard was one of those rare men who had his cake and ate it, too: he achieved remarkable career goals while entertaining himself along the way with what can only be called oppositional defiance. In a strange twist of history, he actually pulled off the mischief that has always been attached to others like Gordon Cooper.
In this regard Thompson studies Shepard's military misbehavior and his philandering. The author's account of the future astronaut's brushes with military authority is detailed and rather surprising. One comes away with a sense that the New Hampshire flyboy's skills as a naval test pilot must have been noteworthy, outweighing numerous dangerous incidents of "flat-hatting" or strafing civilians on the ground. His cheating on his virtuous and devoted wife Louise--a spouse of the Lady Bird Johnson mold--is a blotch that time will probably not erase. Thompson does observe that Shepard's amorous sorties off the reservation were adolescent in nature; the astronaut apparently never engaged in any sort of long term relationship in which Louise was displaced.
Although there is in this work a lot about Shepard to dislike, the author clearly strove for a balanced presentation. Shepard appears to have made his peace with Glenn at the time of the Freedom Seven flight. After retirement he demonstrated a better than average interest in philanthropy and seems to have worked harder in his later years to enrich his marriage with Louise. Perhaps best known is his decade long battle with Meniere's Disease, and later with a form of leukemia. In some ways the Meniere's was more of a psychological jolt, coming as it did at the beginning of the Gemini, and ultimately, the Apollo Programs. Whatever his colleagues felt about him, Shepard was widely respected in the NASA management circle for outstanding cape com work in the troubled Carpenter and Cooper flights. With Glenn, his chief rival, out of the picture due to a head injury and political considerations, Shepard was the logical choice to command the maiden voyages of these new craft--and by implication become the first man to walk on the moon.
But this was not to be. For nearly a decade Shepard lost his license to fly any type of aircraft due to balance impairment [and other less known medical problems brought to light by the author.] Did he take this forced grounding graciously? Admittedly not. But the author assesses this period of Shepard's career with more depth than other commentators. He notes, for example, that Shepard had burned his bridges with the Navy by joining NASA and could not return to what seemed to be a straight road to admiralty status. While the Navy was no longer an option, Shepard was proving himself to be a better than average business man and becoming independently wealthy. Freed of aviator-astronaut responsibilities, he could have lived a highly lucrative lifestyle.
But he stayed with NASA, a nasty Don Quixote. Only a man in similar straits like Deke Slayton, himself medically grounded from space travel, could have understood and tolerated his subaltern's angry depression which alienated other astronauts in the program and at times rendered him a public relations nightmare. What sustained him through his bureaucratic Siberia was the desire to return to active status, but perhaps more strongly a desire to conquer his own medical problem. Shepard would admit that his selection for the first Mercury flight was the professional highlight of his career. Reinstatement to flight status for Apollo was for him a personal triumph of a different sort,
Shepard was due for some luck. Experimental surgery put him on line for Apollo 13, but management bumped him to 14 to absorb training and thus he avoided the near catastrophic events of unlucky 13. Shepard seemed grateful to be back--choosing for his Apollo 14 crew Stu Roosa, who had defined the art of avoiding Shepard in company hallways. Apollo 14 survived at least three mission-threatening crises on its way to the world's most famous tee shot. What the author shares about the moon landing mission is one of its least known achievements: it brought its commander to tears.
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