There are moments that feel like they'll last forever, moments that tie the smallest lives to the grandest events. One of those moments was Sputnik in 1957, when a boy in West Virginia looked at a moving light in the sky, and dreamed that he would build a rocket. But unlike a thousand other dreamers, Homer Hickham built his rockets, and in 'Rocket Boys' he takes us back to his childhood in Coalwood, and way in which a whole town achieved escape velocity from the daily tyranny of mining and high school football to dream of the skies.

This book is triumphant, melancholic, nostalgic, and deeply true. Every awkward dreamer and uncertain utopian will see themselves reflected in Homer Hickham. Right now, his childhood seems more real than my own. The story effortlessly blends the personal tribulations of family and high school, scrounging and bartering materials for rockets, and scientific progress from amateur bomb maker to the second best rocket scientist in the United States (#1 being Werner Von Braun).

The only thing that disappoints me with this book is that today, it is much harder to follow in Hickham's footsteps. As a national, we are less adventurous, less crafty, less willing to risk explosions and fire in pursuit of our dreams. But we still have Rocket Boys,