Starman

May 15, 2011
Soviet history, according to this engaging biography of the first human being to orbit Earth, gave us no heroes, except for Yuri Gagarin, the farm boy who dreamed of flying airplanes and wound up flying into space in March 1961. This straightforward account of the cosmonaut, from birth to death, isnt the most uplifting of stories. After his history-making space flight, Gagarin became a political tool of the Russian governmentfeted, promoted, shipped to various places. But his career as a pilot was all but over. He was too valuable to risk losing, and when he went down in a plane he was piloting barely seven years after he was catapulted to fame, the rumors began that he was drunk at the time, that he was murdered, that he killed himself. Admitting we may never know the whole truth about Gagarins death, Doran and Bizony dont really deliver the lid-blowing expos' the subtitle implies. Still, this is a well-researched, informative biography of a man who, despite his fame, remains a shadowy historical figure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)