Apollo in the Age of Aquarius

A Bloomberg View Must-Read Book of the Year
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year

The summer of 1969 saw astronauts land on the moon for the first time and hippie hordes descend on Woodstock. Neil Maher argues that the conjunction of these two era-defining events was not entirely coincidental. Apollo in the Age of Aquarius shows how the celestial aspirations of NASA’s Apollo space program were tethered to terrestrial concerns, from the civil rights struggle and the antiwar movement to environmentalism, feminism, and the counterculture.

“I very much enjoyed this book. Think of it as a substance-rich, original on every page exploration of how the space program interacted with the environmental movement, and also with the peace and ‘Whole Earth’ movements of the 1960s.”
—Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution

“Succeeds admirably in weaving a seamless web of technological, economic, political, social and cultural strands and their multiple intended and unintended consequences.”
—Times Literary Supplement

“NASA and Woodstock may now seem polarized, but this illuminating, original chronicle… traces multiple crosscurrents between them… The costs of the Apollo program enraged inner-city activists… NASA duly deployed a crack team of aeronautics experts to solve practical housing issues for poor African Americans.”
—Nature