Member Reading Recommendations

During our May Day 2026 lunchtime gathering, GESTA members and friends took some time to share reading recommendations. The recommendations spanned books related to national and international labor movements and the human experience, and included many books with both a historical and/or NASA-focus. We wanted to share some of them with you here:

• A Knock at Midnight by Martin Luther King
• A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin 
• Chasing Space: An Astronaut’s Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances by Leland Melvin
• Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization by Robert Zubrin
• Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor by Kim Kelly
• God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène
• Poems New and Collected by Wislawa Szymborska 
• Rank and File Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers by Alice Lynd and Staughton Lynd
• The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson
• The Fourth Turning Is Here by Neil Howe
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in the Space Program by Richard Paul and Steven Moss

If you are looking for your next good read, consider one of your fellow member’s recommendations.