Glenn: The Astronaut Who Would Be President by Van Riper, Frank - 1983

New York: Empire Books, 1983. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/good. 360 pages. Illus., notes, index. DJ has some wear, soiling, and edge tears/chips. Minor edge soiling. Inscribed by the autho on fep and signed on t-p. Frank Van Riper is a nationally acclaimed Washington-based photographer, author, journalist and lecturer. His current book, done in collaboration with Judith Goodman, his wife and professional partner, is 'Serenissima: Venice in Winter.' A collection of atmospheric black and white photographs and essays, it was published in Fall, '08 to rave reviews both in the United States and in Italy. Frank is a documentary photographer in the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Gianni Berengo Gardin. He also is an award-winning writer, having served for 20 years in the Washington Bureau of the New York Daily News, as White House correspondent, national political correspondent, and Washington Bureau news editor. For 19 years he was the photography columnist of the Washington Post. John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 - December 8, 2016) was a United States Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, and United States Senator from Ohio. In 1962 he was the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times. Before joining NASA, Glenn was a distinguished fighter pilot in World War II and Korea with six Distinguished Flying Crosses and eighteen clusters on his Air Medal.He was one of the Mercury Seven, military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA as the United States' first astronauts. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission; the first American to orbit the Earth, he was the fifth person in space. He received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990, and was the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven.After Glenn resigned from NASA in 1964 and retired from the Marine Corps the following year, he planned to run for a U.S. Senate seat from Ohio. An injury in early 1964 forced his withdrawal, and he lost a close primary election in 1970. A member of the Democratic Party, Glenn first won election to the Senate in 1974 and served for 24 years until January 3, 1999.In 1998, still a sitting senator, Glenn was the oldest person to fly in space as a crew member of the Discovery space shuttle and the only person to fly in both the Mercury and Space Shuttle programs. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.