“Growing Up With Spaceflight- Space Shuttle” contains the true story of what it was like for an average guy to literally grow up with the American space program. The premise being that some people were close to the space program, hands-on, working daily with the hardware and the technology that made history… the rest of us had to watch it on TV. This final volume in the six book series follows the Space Shuttle from the first free-flight of the Approach and Landing Test to the final launch or the 135th shuttle mission. You’ll experience the program from watching it on a tiny black and white TV in the author’s boyhood bedroom to camping on the riverbank for STS-1 and eventually covering STS-135 from the press site. Along the way readers who also grew up in that era will read the accounts and say, “Hey! That was me too! I did that with the spaceflight toys, I watched that on TV, I remember that day.” Additionally, readers who were not yet born will be able to get an up-close and personal look though the keyhole of the door of time and experience what it was really like to grow up in that exciting era. Author Wes Oleszewski is known for his detailed historical narratives published in his more than two dozen books. From those that look at shipwrecks, to the golden era of America’s space program, his method remains the same. Those readers who seek technical details about NASA’s manned space vehicles and rockets will not be disappointed. The author has, as always, dug deeper than previous writers into NASA’s documentation and pulled out fascinating and highly obscure details of the events. Working with editors who are, in their own right, experts in the history of spaceflight, the author managed to surprise even them with a few previously over-looked facts. Yet, although technically correct and fact-filled, the “Growing Up With Spaceflight” series is not a dry engineering account. Rather it is fun and witty read that will take the reader on a pleasure trip to a time gone-by. The author has gone to great lengths to add illustrations that are both informative and unique. As in all of his works, Wes Oleszewski has produced a book that is free of gratuitous sex and violence and he remains clear of the personal lives of the people who made the space program happen. This is a book of pleasure reading that avoids tabloid tidbits. Readers will enjoy this book and they will learn a thing or two as they do.