BOOKS: Asif Siddiqi's Book Among Five Best Space Books

In today's WSJ, the "Five Best" column picks the five best books about outer space and one of the books is by Asif Siddiqi, a Bangladeshi-American assistant professor of history at Fordham University in NYC.

The Wall Street Journal
December 30, 2006

PURSUITS

Books: Five Best

By William Burrows
Mr. Burrows is the author of "This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age." His most recent book is "The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth" (Tor/Forge, 2006).

These books about outer space soar above the rest, says science writer William Burrows 

1. A Man on the Moon
By Andrew Chaikin
Time-Life Books, 1999 

2. Challenge to Apollo
By Asif A. Siddiqi
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2000 

With the advent of glasnost in the 1980s, the Soviet space archives were opened to outsiders, revealing the full extent of Moscow's effort to compete with the U.S. -- and providing NASA historian Asif Siddiqi with the material for this clearly written, exhaustively detailed historical narrative. As "Challenge to Apollo" makes clear, the Soviets' program was undermined by ferocious infighting between Sergei Korolev, the storied chief designer of the Soviet space effort, and his archrival, Valentin Glushko. But even if those two had reached their own glasnost, the Soviet effort was doomed to fall behind: The political and economic system under which Korolev and Glushko operated was grossly unequal to the task of beating its capitalist competitors to another world.

3. Lost Moon
By Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger
Houghton Mifflin, 1994 

4. Sky Walking
By Thomas D. Jones
Smithsonian/HarperCollins, 2006 

5. Bad Astronomy
By Philip Plait
Wiley, 2002 

Sidiqqi is a former NASA historian, specializing in social and cultural history of technology as well as the history of 20th Century Russia - and the intersection of these two areas.

More on Sidiqqi, who has a wide range of interests - from science to history to - gasp! - punk rock, below.

From Asif Siddiqi's official bio:

His current interests also include postcolonial science and technology, specifically the relation between rhetoric and reality in the project of postcolonial modernity.

He is the author of Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge (University Press of Florida, 2003) and The Soviet Space Race with Apollo (University Press of Florida, 2003), originally published in one volume as Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974 (NASA History Office, 2000).

He is serving as series editor of the memoirs of Russian rocket pioneer Academician B. E. Chertok; the first two of four planned volumes have been published as Rockets and People (NASA History Office, 2005) and Rockets and People, Vol. 2: Creating a Rocket Industry (NASA History Office, 2006).

Dr. Siddiqi has published widely on the history of Russian science and technology. His publications include articles on “informal science” in early twentieth century Russia (in Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki, the history journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences), the Stalinist purges (in Technology and Culture), exchanges of knowledge between Soviet and American pioneers of space exploration (in History and Technology), and the Soviet search for Nazi technology in postwar occupied Germany (in Europe-Asia Studies).

He has also published essays for several collected works, including on the origins of Sputnik for Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the Soviet Satellite (Harwood Academic, 2000), on the “privatization of memory” in post-Communist societies in Artefacts: Showcasing Space (London Science Museum, 2005), and on the state of American spaceflight historiography in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight (NASA History Office, 2006).

His two current research projects include "an investigation into scientific and engineering practice in the Stalinist Gulag system" and "the history of the Indian space program."

If that doesn't show the breadth of his interests, his bio also lists him as working on "an autobiographical work on the history of post-punk and indie music from the 1980s and 1990s." (No hint in his bio about his music experiences - was he a punk rocker, perhaps? - SEE UPDATE BELOW).

Reading from his six-page CV [PDF version | HTML version]:

He received his PhD in History in 2004 from Carnegie Mellon; his dissertation: "Dissertation: “The Rockets’ Red Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857-1957."  He received an MBA from the University of Mass-Amherst in 1998. He received his M.S. in Economics in 1992 from Texas A&M; his dissertation: "Effects of Technological Change in Agriculture on Distributive Justice in Bangladesh."  He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M in 1989.

Other items that caught my eye:

• He has written 10 entries in the Encyclopædia Britannica (all annual editions since 2001), on the global aerospace industry.
• He has written 34 essays for the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission website on the history of global aviation and space exploration - http://www.centennialofflight.gov/hof/index.htm
• Among many TV appearances:
  
  • Interviewed for “Modern Marvels: Engineering Disasters,” History Channel TV Documentary, 2003.
  • Interviewed for “Accidents in Space,” BBC TV Documentary, 2002.
  • Interviewed for article “Requiem for a Heavyweight—The End of Mir,” Space.com, March 23, 2001.

Siddiqi is from a scholarly family. He is the son of veteran Bangladeshi scholar and professor Hafiz G.A. Siddiqi, Vice Chancellor of North South University, the first private university in Bangladesh (and a former professor in the U.S.); and Najma Sidiqqi, a retired professor of philosophy at Jahangirnangar University in Dhaka. His sister is Dina Siddiqi, an expert on gender, Islam and women's studies. His wife, Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, is an architect in New York and is the current director of the Library Initiative at Robin Hood Foundation, a large non-profit in the city (this initiative is leading the design and construction of state-of-the-art libraries designed by the best architects for the poorest public schools in New York - story idea, folks!)

UPDATE 12/31: After this was posted, SAJAforum.org contacted Siddiqi and got a clarification on his punk rock connection and why his bio lists him as working on "an autobiographical work on the history of post-punk and indie music from the 1980s and 1990s."

Yes, indeed I was a punk rocker back when I lived in Texas. I still have a passion for many kinds of music and write regularly on the topic. I run a webzine called "Fred" on music and pop culture in general. Occasionally, as in the recent issue, I include essays from contributors on South Asian issues. For the last issue, see: http://home.earthlink.net/%7Ecliched/fred/fred7/fred7.html.

Comments

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[jiel]

I am interested about outer space topics.Well, I really do not know about those books. Maybe it's time for me to check them out.

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Thanks for sharing this informative post.

[excuse me]

Wow Asif!

your back must be bent from carrying a bagful of degrees. why carry so many. if a man is a gentleman he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman whatever he knows is bad for him.

jokes apart, your pursuits are so specific, yet so varied, that it taxes credulity. from sputnik to solzhenytsyn's gulag to post colonial technology to punk rock. i am a half-hearted history buff fascinated as much by union carbide blimps first used by U.S. to spy on Germany from beyond the surrounding mountains during first world as I am by philip graham's (the washington post guy) taking his clothes off at a meeting of director's of Comsat, which he was asked by JFK to head. it would be fun to see some of your work excerpted by SAJA. would make an interesting story.

moral: ah, the fabulous post cold war history and the perestroika, valentina tereshkova, laika, russian mafia and andre sakharov. but, but, don't forget the punk rock. the michael jackson of avionics. if that's not a word, it is now.