An Administrative History of NASA, 1958–1963

This softcover copy is hand-signed and inscribed on the title page by NASA Administrator James E. Webb: “To Harvey Sherman, with appreciation for his help and friendship.” The recipient is very likely Harvey Sherman, the public-administration writer and organizational consultant whose own book It All Depends: A Pragmatic Approach to Organization appeared the same year, though this volume does not itself document the nature of his connection to Webb or to NASA. A hardcover copy of the same title is also held in this collection, but this signed softcover is the more significant of the two. NASA SP-4101, the first volume in the NASA History Series, prepared by Robert L. Rosholt of the University of Minnesota’s Public Administration Center. Nine chapters trace NASA’s administrative development from its NACA antecedents and 1958 founding through the November 1963 headquarters reorganization — organizational structure, procedures, personnel, finance, and procurement — illustrated throughout with fold-out organizational diagrams charting NACA’s and then NASA’s structure as it evolved year by year. Six appendixes reprint the Space Act, further organization charts, and NASA’s personnel, finance, and procurement growth. The foreword is personally written and signed in print by Administrator Webb, dated February 3, 1966, laying out the “management triad” he formed with Dr. Hugh L. Dryden and Dr. Robert C. Seamans upon taking office in February 1961—the same partnership framing Webb gives in his introduction to Apollo Expeditions to the Moon, elsewhere in this collection. Rosholt’s preface and a March 1965 postscript acknowledge Minnesota professors Lloyd Short and George Warp, NASA Historian Eugene Emme and Deputy Historian Frank Anderson, Helen Wells and Sally Holman of the NASA Historical Staff, and early NASA contacts Don Cadle, Albert Siepert, and John Young.