Aided by Texas newsman Mickey Herskowitz, Walter Cunningham presents the astronauts in all their strengths and their weaknesses and of the cut-throat “astropolitics” that dictated how the astronaut corps functioned. But this is not just a “tell-all” autobiography. It is also a story of triumph and tragedy. Cunningham brings us into the training program itself and reveals what it takes physically and mentally to be an astronaut. In addition, he relates the story of the devastating Apollo 1 fire that took the lives of astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee. Cunningham then takes the reader on the flight of Apollo 7, which became the first successful Earth-orbiting mission.