When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, limits on NASA funding and the lack of direction under the Nixon and Carter administrations had left the U.S. space program at a crossroads. In contrast to his predecessors, Reagan saw outer space as humanity’s final frontier and as an opportunity for global leadership. His optimism and belief in American exceptionalism guided a decade of U.S. activities in space, including bringing the space shuttle into operation, dealing with the 1986 Challenger accident and its aftermath, committing to a permanently crewed space station, encouraging private sector space efforts, and fostering international space partnerships with both U.S. allies and with the Soviet Union. Drawing from a trove of declassified primary source materials and oral history interviews, John M. Logsdon provides the first comprehensive account of Reagan’s civilian and commercial space policies during his eight years in the White House. Even as a fiscal conservative who was hesitant to increase NASA’s budget, Reagan’s enthusiasm for the space program made him perhaps the most pro-space president in American history.

In this alternate history novel, what-if Ronald Reagan became President in 1976 instead and the Space Race turned out differently? He pledges to support NASA with the moon landings, and declares that a moon base would be established by 1979, followed by a Mars Base by 1989. The Soviets decide to up the ante by building something bigger.The rest of Earth follows the original timeline, so terrorism rears its ugly head, which will forever change American politics. Iran and its attempt at taking hostages is taken care of in 1979, but a new threat emerges because of it. The new President of the United States has to pursue these enemies of the U.S. to secure America's future. We follow America's progress from Moon to Mars, along with the Teacher in Space Program, to an eventual starship mission out of the solar system, which will continue in book two, Final Frontier.

Looks at the operations of the International Space Station from the perspective of the Houston flight control team, under the leadership of NASA's flight directors, who authored the book. The book provides insight into the vast amount of time and energy that these teams devote to the development, planning and integration of a mission before it is executed. The passion and attention to detail of the flight control team members, who are always ready to step up when things do not go well, is a hallmark of NASA human spaceflight operations. With tremendous support from the ISS program office and engineering community, the flight control team has made the International Space Station and the programs before it a success.

Reopening the Space Frontier escapes the usual arc of space policy analysis focused on technological choice and instead explains the international legal and political economic barriers to the renewed exploration, development and settlement of celestial bodies like the Moon and Mars. The science and engineering of the mid-twentieth century were sufficient for human landings on the Moon. Yet today the human adventure in space is limited to visits by small numbers of astronauts to a single space station in Earth orbit. As the author explains, using the institutions that opened terrestrial geographic frontiers in the past provides the effective means for reopening the space frontier. Along the way he demolishes the wishful thinking that has shackled popular thinking about space policy. International competition rather than international cooperation motivated states to open terrestrial frontiers for centuries, and that motivation will have to be harnessed again for our species to permanently occupy other worlds of the solar system.

In the popular imagination, space is the final frontier. Will that frontier be a wild west, or will it instead be treated as the oceans are: as a global commons, where commerce is allowed to flourish and no one country dominates? At this moment, nations are free to send missions to Mars or launch space stations. Space satellites are vital to many of the activities that have become part of our daily lives—from weather forecasting to GPS and satellite radio. The militaries of the United States and a host of other nations have also made space a critical arena—spy and communication satellites are essential to their operations. Beginning with the Reagan administration and its attempt to create a missile defense system to protect against attack by the Soviet Union, the U.S. military has decided that the United States should be the dominant power in space in order to protect civilian and defense assets. In Heavenly Ambitions, Joan Johnson-Freese draws from a myriad of sources to argue that the United States is on the wrong path: first, by politicizing the question of space threats and, second, by continuing to believe that military domination in space is the only way to protect U.S. interests in space. Johnson-Freese, who has written and lectured extensively on space policy, lays out her vision of the future of space as a frontier where nations cooperate and military activity is circumscribed by arms control treaties that would allow no one nation to dominate—just as no one nation's military dominates the world's oceans. This is in the world's interest and, most important, in the U.S. national interest.

In February 1989, the CIA's chief in Islamabad famously cabled headquarters a simple message: "We Won." It was an understated coda to the most successful covert intelligence operation in American history. In What We Won, CIA and National Security Council veteran Bruce Riedel tells the story of America's secret war in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Soviet 40th Red Army in the war that proved to be the final battle of the cold war. He seeks to answer one simple question—why did this intelligence operation succeed so brilliantly? Riedel has the vantage point few others can offer: He was ensconced in the CIA's Operations Center when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979. The invasion took the intelligence community by surprise. But the response, initiated by Jimmy Carter and accelerated by Ronald Reagan, was a masterful intelligence enterprise. Many books have been written about intelligence failures—from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. Much less has been written about how and why intelligence operations succeed. The answer is complex. It involves both the weaknesses and mistakes of America's enemies, as well as good judgment and strengths of the United States. Riedel introduces and explores the complex personalities pitted in the war—the Afghan communists, the Russians, the Afghan mujahedin, the Saudis, and the Pakistanis. And then there are the Americans—in this war, no Americans fought on the battlefield. The CIA did not send officers into Afghanistan to fight or even to train. In 1989, victory for the American side of the cold war seemed complete. Now we can see that a new era was also beginning in the Afghan war in the 1980s, the era of the global jihad. This book examines the lessons we can learn from this intelligence operation for the future and makes some observations on what came next in Afghanistan—and what is likely yet to come.