Sex on the Moon

April 18, 2011
A promising NASA recruit throws everything away for a girl, illustrating the fascinating consequences when science, ambition, and starry-eyed love collide. In bestselling author Mezrich's telling, Thad Roberts, while at the University of Utah, became determined to be an astronaut and threw himself into science courses. He left his wife behind when he was accepted to the elite Johnson Space Center Cooperative Program in Houston, the training ground for NASA scientists. Despite his lack of an engineering background, Roberts excelled in the life sciences department. While cataloguing samples, he noticed the moon rocks NASA categorized as "trash"âsamples returned after experiments. Then Roberts met and fell in love with a new recruit, Rebecca, and planned to give her the moon, or at least its profits, by stealing the "used" moon rocks. Roberts devised the heist and arranged an online sale with a mineral collector in Belgium. The suspicious buyer alerted the FBI, which set up a sting, and Roberts was sentenced to eight years in federal prison. Mezrich (The Accidental Billionaires, from which The Social Network was adapted) has perfected his intensely readable brand of nonfiction: talented, often unscrupulous, young people skyrocketing to the top only to tumble back to earth.

June 1, 2011

Glammed-up new-journalistic reconstruction of three young interns' naïve plot to steal NASA's treasured moon rocks.

Mezrich (The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, 2009, etc.) enthusiastically re-creates this oddball 2002 moon-rock heist, led by ambitious lunar-obsessed Mormon Thad Roberts and two female accomplices, all of whom were part of a select group of NASA interns and soon-to-be astronauts-in-training. Raised in an incredibly strict Mormon family in Utah, Roberts decided that the best route of escape was to pursue his love of outer space—to the detriment of his premature marriage, he re-directed his entire life and education toward becoming an astronaut. This run-up to the central lunar-themed criminal activity is the most captivating section of the book. Roberts' family members are terrifying in their religious-zealot freakishness, and in the character of Roberts himself, Mezrich constructs a portrait of a quintessential American individualist in control of his own destiny—a control that soon evaporated after his exposure to the lunar rocks that NASA had stored away for decades. Unfortunately, the author seems to distrust the subject matter's potential to generate its own drama. The prose quickly becomes overheated, and his ham-fisted Norman Mailer–esque stylistic moves rarely connect with adequate force. Mezrich does his best to legitimize Roberts' ill-conceived plot to give his new lover "the moon." But once the young astronaut wannabe crossed this line from grandiose ambition to small-time crook, the author pushes hard to frame these deeds as heroic. Yet Roberts and his co-ed co-conspirators come off as delusional kids who can no longer discern sci-fi fantasies from real life.

Even a seasoned pro like Mezrich can't move this ridiculous caper beyond glorified fraternity-prank status.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 1, 2011

NASA fellow Thad Roberts wanted to charm his girlfriend, so he convinced her and another friend, both NASA interns, to help him get past all those security checkpoints and steal some moon rocks. Considering how wacky this sounds and that best-selling author Mezrich wrote both The Accidental Billionaires (the basis for the film The Social Network) and Bringing Down the House (the basis for the film 21), this would seem to be a winner.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2011
Here's more narrative nonfiction by the author of Bringing Down the House (2002) and The Accidental Billionaires (2009), which were turned into the successful movies 21 and The Social Network, respectively. This opus is pretty much guaranteed to get the same treatment, for it's a fascinating story. Thad Roberts emerges from a sheltered life (his parents, strict Mormons, disowned him when he was barely 21 years old), gets accepted by a prestigious NASA astronaut program, falls in love with a girl, and decides a cool way to express his feelings would be to steal some actual moon rocksthus giving her, literally, a piece of the moon. His plan goes disastrously wrong. The heist goes off without a hitch, but the people he's lined up to buy the priceless rocks turn out to be FBI agents, and he winds up in federal prison. Like Mezrich's previous books, this one has the readability of popular fiction, a ripping story, and great characters (in addition to Roberts, there's Axel Emmermann, the Belgian mineral collector instrumental in setting up the FBI sting). Another winner from an extremely talented writer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

September 26, 2011
Thad Roberts is a brilliant, thrill-seeking NASA employee who goes rogue and—along with a few accomplices—makes it his personal mission to break into an impregnable government laboratory and steal a hunk of lunar rock to impress his girlfriend and possibly make a little money on the side. Surprisingly, narrator Casey Affleck offers only a middling performance. His pronunciation of words frequently proves challenging for the listener and his tone is too melancholy for Mezrich’s history of this madcap and thrilling heist. Additionally, Affleck’s narration often registers as mannered and melodramatic. Still, his performance has its finer moments. Affleck is at his best reading the letters written by Thad during his incarceration, which allow him to create and occupy a character. A Doubleday hardcover.

June 1, 2011

Glammed-up new-journalistic reconstruction of three young interns' na�ve plot to steal NASA's treasured moon rocks.

Mezrich (The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, 2009, etc.) enthusiastically re-creates this oddball 2002 moon-rock heist, led by ambitious lunar-obsessed Mormon Thad Roberts and two female accomplices, all of whom were part of a select group of NASA interns and soon-to-be astronauts-in-training. Raised in an incredibly strict Mormon family in Utah, Roberts decided that the best route of escape was to pursue his love of outer space--to the detriment of his premature marriage, he re-directed his entire life and education toward becoming an astronaut. This run-up to the central lunar-themed criminal activity is the most captivating section of the book. Roberts' family members are terrifying in their religious-zealot freakishness, and in the character of Roberts himself, Mezrich constructs a portrait of a quintessential American individualist in control of his own destiny--a control that soon evaporated after his exposure to the lunar rocks that NASA had stored away for decades. Unfortunately, the author seems to distrust the subject matter's potential to generate its own drama. The prose quickly becomes overheated, and his ham-fisted Norman Mailer-esque stylistic moves rarely connect with adequate force. Mezrich does his best to legitimize Roberts' ill-conceived plot to give his new lover "the moon." But once the young astronaut wannabe crossed this line from grandiose ambition to small-time crook, the author pushes hard to frame these deeds as heroic. Yet Roberts and his co-ed co-conspirators come off as delusional kids who can no longer discern sci-fi fantasies from real life.

Even a seasoned pro like Mezrich can't move this ridiculous caper beyond glorified fraternity-prank status.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)