Rocket Man by Nancy Conrad and Howard A. Klausner

Rocket Man by Nancy Conrad and Howard A. Klausner, is an account of the life of Pete Conrad, not only one of the most famous astronauts of the Apollo era, but also one of the most colorful and interesting. It is an often amusing story of hijinks and practical jokes by one of the men who best personified the nickname “Space Cowboy.” But it is also a story of inspiration and of great deeds accomplished despite—some might say because of—great adversity.

What was not generally known about Conrad during his illustrious career as an astronaut was that he suffered from dyslexia. The condition made reading comprehension an almost impossible skill to master, which meant that he was considered a poor student, especially in English and History. The concept of dyslexia was little understood in the 1940s, when Conrad was struggling in his studies. People who suffered from it were considered “slow” or worse.

Conrad also came from a family whose fortunes, once great, had taken an irreparable blow from the stock market crash on 1929. Slowly and steadily, the Conrad family descended from comfortable if not great wealth, to something less than that.

With all this, along with a naturally rebellious nature, it was inevitable that Conrad would be a rambunctious youth. This tendency, plus his poor academic record, got Conrad thrown out of his first prep school. One could have imagined that, unchecked, the young Conrad might have wound up in jail, or worse.

It was flying that saved Conrad and set him on a path toward his destiny. He worked, while not at school, at a small air field near where he lived. He fell in love with the idea of flight. It was something that was easy for him to understand, something that the dyslexia could not hold him back from. The story of how he learned to fly is one of the most amusing and touching this reviewer has ever read. Conrad was able to apply the discipline he learned from flying to school. He overcame his dyslexia with intellect, and a sheer force of will.