Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants

Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants. by John D. Clark "And even when it was successfully completed, the peroxide would still decompose slowly; not enough to start a runaway chain reaction, but enough to build up an oxygen pressure in a sealed tank, and make packaging impossible. And it is a nerve-wracking experience to put your ear against a propellant tank and hear it go "glub" —long pause — "glub" and so on. After such an experience many people, myself (particularly) included, tended to look dubiously at peroxide and to pass it by on the other side."

I love the idea of looking for overlooked gems. Here are a few of mine: Infinite in All Directions, Freeman Dyson : just a book of his thoughts, but I really appreciated his perspective on respect between religion/spirituality and science. Ignition! An informal history of liquid rocket propellants, J.D. Clark : I picked up a copy of this in a roadside bookstore on a lark. Entertaining tales of people blowing themselves up in the name of science. Apollo 11 Press kit : My grandmother was a journalist for Florida Today during the space race, and she gave me her copy. It is amazing to see how much detail was provided. I don't know if our modern press ever gets press kits like these, but it was not dumbed-down much at all, which was very nice to see. The Adventures of Samurai Cat, Mark Rogers : Silly fun. Kind of like if Bored of the Rings had been written by Jerry Bruckheimer and Spider Jerusalem. Into the cool, Sagan and Schnieder : about complexity and thermodynamics. Written for a layperson, I still learned a lot from it. Order out of Chaos, Prigogine and Stengers : More thermo, also written for lay audience, also learned a lot from it.…

I'll second these picks as having lots of information wrapped up inside engaging writing. Ignition: http://web.gccaz.edu/~wkehowsk/ignition.pdf "Excuse me, sir...": ftp://www.fourmilab.ch/pub/etexts/www/gergel/isopropyl_bromide.pdf