Strange Angel: the Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons

Orlando: Harcourt, 2005. First edition, first letter (full number line). Small quarto in multi-color (predominanltly blue and yelllow/green) jacket; 350 pages: illustrations; 24 cm bibliographical references and index. Fine to fine(-) in fine jacket with very faint wear to extremities of both. Jacket housed in a mylar sleeve. in fine dust-jacket. Hardcover. ISBN: 015100997X

Well-written. "A lonely misfit born into a wealthy Pasadena family, as a boy Parsons read science fiction and launched rockets in his backyard. By his early twenties, he was a leader of Caltech's "Suicide Squad," the motley band of young enthusiasts who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But his visionary imagination also led him into the occult community thriving in 1930s Los Angeles, and when fantasy's pull became stronger than reality, he lost both his work and his wife. With a cast of characters that includes Aleister Crowley, Howard Hughes, L. Ron Hubbard, Robert Heinlein, Theodore von Kármán, and Albert Einstein, this book recovers a fascinating life and explores the unruly consequences of genius." —Publisher. Contents: Paradise -- Moon child -- Erudition -- The suicide squad -- Fraternity -- The mass -- Brave new world -- Zenith -- Degrees of freedom -- A new dawn -- Rock bottom -- Into the abyss. Rocketry -- United States -- Biography. Occultists -- United States -- Biography. Aeronautical engineers -- United States -- Biography. Aeronautical engineers. Occultists. Rocketry. Parsons, Jack, 1914-1952.