Okay, I can give you a book review of sorts for this volume.
a)--High clay content paper is the way to go. It makes the book's illustrations "pop," and these pages will seem the same even a half century from now in their condition. The book has a very interesting smell, too as a result.
b)--One of the things that caught my eye is that this is the very first time that I have seen so many photos of participants in the whole program, the entire tree of the Dyna Soar command. The book is worth it just for that. Many of these photos I have never seen before of the US personalities involved. There are also counterpart photos of Soviet personalities involved in their program (just a few--but more than most books have).
c)--Houchin made the decision to include segments (in gray boxes) "The Evolving Soviet Hypersonic Threat," and "The Continuing Soviet Hypersonic Threat," which provides information on contemporaneous activities in the USSR at the same time that Dyna Soar was an viable program. This is laudable.
d)--Each section has references galore.
e)--The book's modeling section is quite short. Four pages. I would have liked that part to be longer.
f)--Overall, the book makes the effort to be comprehensive, and reflects a post-2010 (or post-2015) viewpoint on the enterprise. Which is good. This means it is contemporary to today's time frame in outlook and understanding.
g)--Photos and diagrams were well selected, although I was (my personal opinion only) irritated that some of the portrait photos of participants got repeated elsewhere in the book. However, a good number of the diagrams and photos of the Dyna Soar itself were away from the typical, often-repeated ones. Color photos (of really decent clarity) of the control panels welcomed. The diagrams as they were reproduced were clear (I mean the ones from Dyna Soar documentation). This is a boon.
h)--The type of font used, and the font size I liked. It made the book easier to read.
i)--I understand why they included two fictional scenarios (operational Dyna Soar missions, with pilots on board), and I remain agnostic whether that added value (in understanding mission scenarios) or not. It doesn't detract from the rest.
j)--I didn't realize that Dyna Soar and the X-37 were both built by Boeing.
k)--I am glad that Jack Hagerty caught that the Polet series were related to ASAT tests, and not something else.
l)--There are some typos that I caught in the references (page numbering errors it seems, lack of hyphens between page numbers--one example for a mention of "The Heavens and the Earth"), and my before-mentioned photo of Tereshkova labeled as Gagarin are two nits that I would highlight.
m)--Personalized touch: on the invoice, Jack wrote a thank you in his own handwriting. Kudoes, man!
This was an excellent effort. If you got the moolah, go and buy a copy. I'm glad that I did.
