Adventure Above The Clouds.

A juvenile history of high-altitude flight, not rockets: most of the book covers balloon ascents (Coxwell and Glaisher's record climb, the fatal Tissandier flight, Piccard's stratosphere balloon) and early aeroplane altitude records.

Its final chapter, “Towards the Stars,” is devoted entirely to rockets, explaining the rocket principle with a gun-and-bullet analogy before surveying the era's experimenters: Max Valier and Fritz von Opel's rocket-car and rocket-sled runs on the Avus Speedway and Lake Starnberg, ending in Valier's fatal 1930 test explosion, and Robert Goddard's 1929 parachute-equipped instrument rocket, later backed by a Guggenheim grant. It closes at the German VfR's Raketenflugplatz, where Johannes Winkler and Reinhold Tilling sent rockets to 1,000 and 6,000 feet respectively.