The Atlantic

The Long View of the Challenger Disaster

Adam Higginbotham’s new book on the tragedy manages to add depth to a well-known story.
Source: MPI / Getty; Corbis / Getty

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There were moments in Adam Higginbotham’s new book that made me gasp and flip to the endnotes. I wasn’t looking to find the story’s denouement—I already knew what happened on the morning of January 28, 1986: The space shuttle Challenger broke apart just over a minute into its voyage, killing all seven astronauts aboard. But Higginbotham had so fully reconstructed the events, including the inner thoughts of people who died nearly 40 years ago, that , I just needed to answer the question: ? How could he relay what

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