The fantastic story of rocketeers, visionaries, and madmen, from Capitalists and Nazis in the West to Communists in the East, it’s the tale of Faustian anti-hero Wernher von Braun, solitary genius Robert Goddard, magical loner Jack Parsons, titanic Sergei Korolev, and the legendary trio of Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, and Neil Armstrong. A behind-the-scenes story of the first Space Age. Ranging from the murderous V-2 to the miraculous Saturn V, from cloak-and-dagger espionage and the blitzkrieg battles of World War II to the atomic deserts of Fort Bliss and the nail-biting missions launched at Cape Canaveral, All Up is an epic telling of the thrilling and true legends.
Author
J. W. Rinzler has authored over 20 books including two New York Times bestsellers and a #1 best-selling graphic novel. With more than 600,000 copies in print, his books have been translated into seven languages. J. W. Rinzler grew up in Manhattan, New York City, and then in Berkeley, California. He fell in love with old monster films, such as Dracula and Frankenstein, as well as Robin Hood and other adventure movies. He was an avid comic-book and novel reader, an intrepid moviegoer, and had his mind blown by The Beatles, Star Trek, Bruce Lee, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Frank Frazetta, Michelangelo, and Mad Magazine. Rinzler drew his own comic books (badly), then, in his 20s, moved onto figurative oil painting (okay-ly, but self-taught). He lived in France for almost 10 years, where he began writing. Back in the USA, he worked as executive editor at Lucasfilm for fifteen years, chronicling the work of George Lucas and his genial collaborators in a series of books about Star Wars and Indiana Jones. During this time, Rinzler also directed and wrote an animated short Riddle of the Black Cat, based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, which was accepted into several festivals, including the Montreal World Film Festival. His latest book is an epic historical fiction thriller called ALL UP, an epic about the first Space Age, published in July 2020. The sequel will be out in a year or two... Meanwhile his book on Howard Kazanjian, producer, is due in May 2021; and on Kubrick's The Shining in fall 2021. Rinzler is married and has two daughters and one grandson. He lives on the northern California coast.
