Paperback: Dark Side of the Moon, by Gerard DeGroot

This fierce book acts as a corrective to the trumpeting – how many times did we hear Thus Spake Zarathustra? – of Nasa and its starry-eyed supporters. DeGroot's polemic against America's $35bn lunar obsession encompasses the erotic lure of rockets ("most boys... become interested in girls"), dubious spin-offs ("only an astronaut needs to know how to make urine potable") and Neil Armstrong's "One small step" ("a freeze-dried slogan"). It is hard to disagree with DeGroot's conclusion that the "Moon voyage was the ultimate ego trip", but it is equally hard to imagine America not going.