Apollo Artifacts

Alexei Leonov’s art book Earth and Space Painting

Alexei Leonov  - Voskhod 2 (World’s first EVA "Space walk") and ASTP cosmonaut - produced Earth and Space Painting in 2004. It is a huge book (12" by 24" or so) with awesome plates of his work plus photos from his career and family life. It is written in both English and Russian. It is a very short print run limited edition of a few hundred books produced by the investment bank he works with - Baring Vostok Capital Partners.

When I went to the Sims & Hankow autograph show in 2006, Alexei had a copy on his table for people to look through. He said the copies are mostly in the hands of government people, astronaut friends, and his bank's customers and the book was never sold in stores. He was not pushing the book at all, just letting people page through it. I came back several times to look and he just smiled. When I finally took the plunge to buy a copy, he said to me: "Dave Scott you are very clever." Ha. I wish I had my iPod on record at that moment.

Russians in Space

This interesting book about Russians astronauts and the Russian space program by Evgeny Riabchikov is an excellent English language primer on the subject. My copy has been signed by Valentina Tereshikova - Vostok 6 (first woman in space), Alexi Leonov - Voskhod 2 (World’s first EVA “Space walk”) ASTP, Valery Kubasov – Soyuz 6, ASTP, Soyuz 36, and Pavel Popovich – Vostok 4, Soyuz 14.

Signed astronaut biographies

I collect signed astronaut and other Apollo biographies. Since I am a writer (three books so far) and I know what it takes to write a book I find that signed books are more interesting than the signed photos that many others collect.