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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Spitfire 944

An evening pause: Somehow to me this film about an American pilot from World War II and a single moment during his tour seems fitting to me on Washington’s birthday. I can’t explain why, but it does.

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

8 comments

  • wayne

    Edward-
    excellent find!

  • Chris

    Ditto on the excellent find – well worth the time!

  • Dick Eagleson

    Splendid stuff! WW2 was my late father’s war. I’ve been an omnivorous glutton for info of any kind about it since I was a kid.

  • Very cool video, and even cooler the gentleman had a piece of the prop. I did not know Spitfire props were wooden.

  • Mitch S

    Also didn’t think Spirie props would be wood that late in the war.
    Really enjoyed this. Glad they let us join them in the room with the pilot and didnt muck it up with music or other “enhancements”.

  • wayne

    Victor Davis Hanson –
    How a Border War in Europe Led to WWII
    Hillsdale College, September 12, 2017
    https://youtu.be/tQq-ORA4fHw
    (1:14:03)

  • Edward

    Wayne,
    Excellent video. I was especially intrigued by his mention that the socialist Axis powers did not cooperate with each other in the same way that the Allied powers did. The allies coordinated together, giving the socialist Soviets, on the Allied side, one job to do and plenty of equipment with which to do it, but the Germans, Japanese, and Italians squabbled over strategic actions such as invasions. The Allies willingly shared technologies and equipment but the Axis refused to share.

  • wayne

    Dick–
    -check this guy out. Not sure of his current activity, but he got off to a good start.

    ‘Rescued Film Project:’
    “31 rolls of film from a WW2 soldier are discovered and processed.”
    [https://youtu.be/VaurfqIW5-k]
    10:35

    Edward-
    that is, an interesting factoid. (and…they all ended up stabbing each other in the back)

    pivoting further back into history:

    “A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War”
    Victor Davis Hanson
    September 7, 2005
    https://youtu.be/8zAlSM-FLss
    (1:20:20)

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