Apollo 13 (Houghton Mifflin, 1994; originally
    published under the title Lost Moon: The
    Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13): This was the
    book that launched the 1995 blockbuster movie
    (starring Tom Hanks and directed by Ron
    Howard) and relaunched space as a hugely
    popular topic for books and films. The story of
    the explosion that crippled Apollo 13 and nearly
    claimed the lives of its crew had remained
    largely untold for a generation. Kluger and co-
    author Jim Lovell told it and the book hit #1 on
the New York Times bestseller list. It is now in its 30th printing in
hardback and a new trade paperback has been issued.

    Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the
    Conquest of Polio (Penguin, 2006): Summer
    used to be a time of terror across the United
    States as warm weather would arrive and with it,
    the poliovirus. Tens of thousands of children
    could enter the season healthy and well and
    leave it forever unable to walk­if they survived
    the disease at all. Splendid Solution is the story
    of the race to beat the scourge and the man
    who did it, in a tale The New York Times called
    “gripping.”

    Nacky Patcher and the Curse of the Dry-
    Land Boats (Philomel, 2007): High in the
    sawtooth mountains of the town of Yole, Nacky
    Patcher—a hapless thief—and Teedie Finn, an
    11-year old orphan, find the broken remains of
    a clipper ship floating in a small lake. How it got
    there and what would happen if the
    townspeople built it is the mystery that drives
    Kluger’s fantasy tale for both adults and kids.
    Praising the book for its "crackling plot and a
dry, lurking wit," the The Washington Post wrote, "And there's
another quality to Nacky Patcher that's as rare as diamonds
(although J.K. Rowling exhibits it, too): respect for this in-between
age group's intelligence and curiosity.”

discoveries they’ve made, and the imaginative ways the engineers
have figured out how to get the spacecraft off the ground and
keep them flying across billions of miles.
OTHER BOOKS BY JEFFREY KLUGER