Countdown: A History of Space Flight

History of human space ambitions, from Tsiolkovsky to Mir, with everything in between covered with admirable detail. Specific programs, like Apollo, have seen many books dedicated to them, but this may be the only volume that covers everything, including military and commercial developments, up through about 1999. I found some parts tedious, but there are plenty of fascinating and very human anecdotes, too. For an American author, Heppenheimer covers Soviet space history expertly and without obvious bias.