Eugene M. Emme Award

The annual Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award, named for NASA’s first Historian, recognizes an outstanding book that advances public understanding of astronautics.  It rewards originality, scholarship and readability.

Anyone, including authors and publishers, can nominate a title.  Nominations are limited to English-language books published (original appearance or new addition) on any of a number of aspects of spaceflight in a variety of disciplines and ranging from juvenile and pop literature to texts intended for academia or practicing scientists and engineers.  In addition to obvious topics of human spaceflight and unmanned interplanetary explorations, nominated titles may also cover related subjects such as astronomy and cosmology, as well as the occasional non-astronautics title that has a space “flavor.”  A review panel of the AAS History Committee selects the recipient of the award.

The Emme Award cycle is as follows:

• Dec-Mar – AAS solicits nominations
• 15 Mar – Deadline for receipt of nominations
• Apr– AAS History Committee invites publishers to send review copies of nominated titles
• 30 May – Deadline for receipt of review copies
• May-Aug – Review panel reads titles submitted for consideration and convenes to discuss
• Sep – Review panel informs AAS Office of title chosen to receive the award, as well as the list of finalists.  AAS Office informs recipient and their publisher, and prepares press release announcing the award selection
• Dec – Emme Award presented during AAS Annual Conference

2008 – Digital Apollo – Human and Machines in Spaceflight (The MIT Press) by David A. Mindell

2007 – Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (Knopf) by Michael J. Neufeld

2006 – Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1976-2004 (Yale University Press) by Peter J. Westwick
Honorable Mention: Testing the Limits – Aviation Medicine and the Origins of Manned Space Flight (Texas A&M Press) by Maura Mackowski

2005 – First Man – The Life of Neil A. Armstrong (Simon & Schuster) by James R. Hansen

2004 – Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America’s First Women in Space Program  (The Johns Hopkins University Press) by Margaret Weitekamp

2003 – Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interpanetary Travel (Joseph Henry Press) by Robert Zimmerman

2002 – The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs (The Johns Hopkins University Press) by Stephen B. Johnson

2001 – Moon Lander – How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module (Smithsonian Institution Press) by Thomas J. Kelly

2000 – Challenge to Apollo – The Soviet Union and the Space Race 1945 – 1974 (NASA) by Asif A. Siddiqi

1999 – America’s Space Sentinels: DSP Satellites and National Security (University Press of Kansas) by Jeffrey T. Richelson

1998 – The New Ocean – The Story of the First Space Age (Random House) by William E. Burrows

1997 – Space and the American Imagination (Smithsonian Institution Press) by Howard E. McCurdy

1996 – Blind Watchers of the Sky – The People and Ideas that Shaped Our View of the Universe (Addison-Wesley) by Rocky Kolb

1995 – Spaceflight Revolution: NASA Langley Research Center from Sputnik to Apollo (NASA) by James R. Hansen

1994 – International Cooperation in Space: The Example of the European Space Agency (Harvard University Press) by Roger M. Bonnet and Vittorio Manno

1993 – The Sputnik Challenge: Eisenhower’s Response to the Soviet Satellite (Oxford University Press) by Robert A. Divine

1992 – Blueprint for Space: From Science Fiction to Science Fact (Smithsonian Institution Press) by Frederick I. Ordway and Randy Liebermann

1991 – Exploring the Sun: Solar Science Since Galileo (The Johns Hopkins University Press) by Karl Hufbauer

1990 – The Home Planet (Addison-Wesley) by Kevin W. Kelley

1989 – Journey Into Space: The First Thirty Years of Space Exploration by (W.W. Norton & Company) Bruce C. Murray

1988 – No Award Given

1987 – Before Lift Off  (The Johns Hopkins University Press) by Henry S.F. Cooper, Jr.

1986 – Pioneering the Space Frontier Report of the National Commission on Space (Bantam Books – paperback)

1985 – Beachheads in Space (Scribner) by Jerry Grey

1984 – 2010: Odyssey Two (Del Rey) by Arthur C. Clarke

1983 – Global Talk (Sijthoff & Noordhoff) by Joseph N. Pelton