In this review on his official site, J. Michael Lennon—Mailer’s archivist and biographer—offers a sharp take on Douglas Brinkley’s American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race. While Brinkley’s book covers the full sweep of JFK’s space ambitions, Lennon zeroes in on the parts that intersect with Norman Mailer’s Of a Fire on the Moon. He praises Brinkley’s treatment of Kennedy’s charisma and the Cold War stakes, but notes that Mailer’s account—more impressionistic, philosophical, and skeptical—remains unmatched in its literary daring. For Lennon, Brinkley’s work is solid history, but Mailer’s is still the book that truly captures the surreal awe and existential strangeness of landing on the Moon.