(Contributed - by Duane Boldt - 06/22/10)

This is Rocket Science by Gloria Skurzynski is a nice overview of rocketry from Chinese black powder and fire arrows up through modern rockets like those built by SpaceX.

This was a pretty short read with lots of nice pictures of the hostorical rockets mentioned. In about 80 pages, it briefly covers different aspects of the development of rocketry over the years starting with the Chinese and covering up through Von Braun's V-2, the Apollo Space Race years, the Space Shuttle and up through recent endeavors such as SpaceX's Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets. It even goes over solar sails and ion engines.

One thing it didn't mention was the Greek Hero Engine before the Chinese fire arrows, but rocket history books seem to be about 50/50 starting with the Greeks or Chinese.

The book was just published in 2010. I highly recommend it for those that was a brief history of rockets through the years, especially students that need this information for school reports.