A thrilling middle-grade narrative nonfiction book that spans from the end of WWII through the Cold War and chronicles Operation Paperclip, the U.S.'s race against the Soviets to recruit former Nazi scientists, most notably Wernher von Braun, to launch the U.S. space program.

Includes eye-catching photos!

To reach the stars, a weapon had to be reinvented into a wonder.

Hitler was dead, yet the men who had created his weapons survived. At the end of WWII, American and Russian soldiers raced each other across Europe to find and capture the German geniuses who had worked for the Nazis. There was one man they wanted more than any: Wernher von Braun.

As a child, von Braun dreamed of creating rockets to reach the stars. As a man, he turned those rockets into forces of destruction, while tens of thousands of people were killed as enslaved labor in his rocket factories. But the Americans and Russians were willing to overlook these crimes. Victory in the Cold War meant more than justice. Victory in the Cold War meant winning the space race.

More than a decade later, with von Braun in the US, military men across the country began relentless trials of their bodies and minds. Who would be the nation’s first astronaut? Who would be the first man to ride von Braun’s rockets beyond Earth? A new kind of hero was needed for a new frontier. Space was calling.