Harvey, Brian 1953-

views updated

Harvey, Brian 1953-

PERSONAL:

Born 1953.

CAREER:

Author.

WRITINGS:

Cosgrave's Coalition, Eureditions (Harrow, England), 1978.

Race into Space: The Soviet Space Programme, foreword by Patrick Moore, E. Horwood (Chichester, West Sussex, England), 1988.

Networking in Europe: A Guide to European Voluntary Organisations, NCVO Publications (London, England), 1992.

Combating Exclusion: Lessons from the Third EU Poverty Programme in Ireland, Combat Poverty Agency (Dublin, Ireland), 1994.

The New Russian Space Programme: From Competition to Collaboration, Wiley (New York, NY), 1996.

The Chinese Space Programme: From Conception to Future Capabilities, Wiley (New York, NY), 1998, published as China's Space Program: From Conception to Manned Spaceflight, Springer (New York, NY), 2004.

The Japanese and Indian Space Programmes: Two Roads into Space, Springer (New York, NY), 2000.

Russia in Space: The Failed Frontier?, Praxis (Chichester, England), 2001.

Europe's Space Programme: To Ariane and Beyond, Springer (New York, NY), 2003.

Space Exploration, Springer (New York, NY), 2007.

Russian Planetary Exploration: History, Development, Legacy, Prospects, Springer (New York, NY), 2007.

Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration, Springer (New York, NY), 2007.

The Rebirth of the Russian Space Program: 50 Years after Sputnik, New Frontiers, Springer (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Irish author Brian Harvey is interested in the history and current progress of the world's various space programs. While Harvey has been most prolific writing about developments in space research during the years of the space race between the Soviet Union and United States, his books also have provided readers with information about current European, Japanese, and Chinese efforts in the field. Among his titles are The Japanese and Indian Space Programmes: Two Roads into Space and Europe's Space Programme: To Ariane and Beyond.

Harvey's book The Chinese Space Programme: From Conception to Future Capabilities, also published as China's Space Program: From Conception to Manned Spaceflight, is a comprehensive look at that country's history in rocketry. It goes back as far as the Ming dynasty, when the Chinese were using rockets in warfare, and relates other stories, such as the invention of a bazooka-like device in medieval China and the story of a sixteenth-century man who created a rocket-propelled chair. The modern China space program was born in the mid-1950s, when Tsien Hsue Shen began work on a guided missile program after observing research conducted in America by Werner von Braun. Research in China stalled during the Cultural Revolution under the communist regime, and has only come back to life in the twenty-first century with the emergence of China as a new economic world power.

Harvey has written several books on the Russian space program, including Race into Space: The Soviet Space Programme, Russia in Space: The Failed Frontier?, The Rebirth of the Russian Space Program: 50 Years after Sputnik, New Frontiers, Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration, and Russian Planetary Exploration: History, Development, Legacy, Prospects. In the last of these, Harvey took advantage of the recent release of many formerly secret Soviet documents about the early decades of that country's space program. He also discovered once-secret photos of many of the Russian spacecraft and included them in his book. From this information, the author organized the information that the Russians had compiled on the Moon, Mars, and Venus in his book. Harvey does not go into the political environment of the time, instead focusing only on the space program itself and its accomplishments. J. Kelley Beatty, writing in Sky & Telescope, praised the way the book "brims with little-known facts and figures" even though the author does not address "big-picture themes."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, November, 1996, review of The New Russian Space Programme: From Competition to Collaboration, p. 480; January, 2001, W.E. Howard, review of The Japanese and Indian Space Programmes: Two Roads into Space, p. 927; September, 2001, W.E. Howard, review of Russia in Space: The Failed Frontier?, p. 141; January, 2005, A.M. Strauss, review of China's Space Program: From Conception to Manned Spaceflight, p. 876.

Guardian (London, England), October 21, 2004, Tim Radford, review of China's Space Program.

Nature, November 17, 1988, Desmond King-Hele, review of Race into Space: The Soviet Space Programme, p. 286; May 21, 1998, Roy Gibson, review of China's Space Program, p. 225.

New Scientist, July 21, 1988, Philip Clark, review of Race into Space, p. 61; June 6, 1998, review of China's Space Program, p. 54.

Sky & Telescope, June, 2007, J. Kelly Beatty, review of Russian Planetary Exploration: History, Development, Legacy, Prospects, p. 72.

Space Policy, November, 1996, Philip R. Harris, review of The New Russian Space Programme, p. 295; November, 1998, Philip Clark, review of The Chinese Space Programme, p. 257.