Moonfire Book Launched to Celebrate Apollo 11 Mission
Jul 27, 2009 | Posted by bryan | 0 Comments
A limited number of copies of a new book being published to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission are to be sold with a piece of moon rock.
Of the 1,969 editions of Moonfire due to be published, the final 12 will include a piece of lunar rock ranging in weight from 0.4 grams to 30.34 grams dependent on price and specification.
Creed Poulson, public relations manager at Taschen America, said that these editions could be worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars”.
Taschen is publishing the book, written by US author and journalist Norman Mailer, who died in 2007.
Moonfire features Mailer’s account of the mission undertaken by astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in 1969.
The writer’s take on events was originally published by LIFE magazine, which he then extended for the book Of a Fire on the Moon, excerpted for this edition.
His insights into the historic occasion are set alongside a number of photographs, images and maps from NASA’s vaults and private collections with many of them being published for the first time as part of this work.
Moonfire is being sold with a free image of Aldrin walking on the moon which has been signed by the astronaut.
It will be the first book by Mailer to be published posthumously.