Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons (Paperback)

Pendle's superbly detailed and addictively readable book makes the reader fall in love with these young men's energy and enthusiasm, and the blazing trail that Parsons left behind him as he finally fell to earth - DAILY TELEGRAPH

Readable and engrossing - Bryan Appleyard, LITERARY REVIEW

Elegantly written ... Pendle with his graceful, measured prose... skilfully steers us through the quagmire of Parson's personal life to place him on the pedestal that he deserves, so that we may admire his remarkable legacy to modern rocket science - OBSERVER

You couldn't make it up - PHYSICS WORLD

A case of truth being stranger than fiction in all its glory. The whole mix is fascinating. Parsons' struggle to achieve a working rocket would make a good story in its own right, but add in the science fiction, add in the strange religion and characters like Hubbard - and finally, throw into the mix Parsons' horrendous death in an apparently accidental explosion at home ... It's a cracker, that rarest of things a popular science book that's a page turner too - POPULARSCIENCE.CO.UK

Fascinating ... we are introduced to a surreal 1930s world where dreams of space flight were inspired by popular science fiction - FOCUS

Entertaining... intriguing - CHEMISTRY WORLD

As a history of space travel, STRANGE ANGEL is a cornerstone ... Highly recommended - Ray Bradbury

Forget geek stereotypes. Parsons' life seems straight out of a Hollywood thriller ... Pendle's book leaves us with a taste of genius's energy and fragility - LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE

Fascinating ... he deftly and seemingly effortlessly leads his readers through the technical aspects of Parsons' work. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to enjoy it - SEATTLE TIMES

A riveting tale of rocketry, the occult, and boom-and-bust 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles - BOOKLIST

An engaging treatment of a time when the modern world moved at the same speed as crazed mania - THE ONION

Offers glimpses not only of the history of a lab, a science and a group of extraordinary people but also of America's rapidly changing political and cultural assumptions ... Parsons' story is an intriguing one, full of contradictions that seem quintessentially of their time - NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Spellbinding ... STRANGE ANGEL has a strong narrative drive and reads like a novel - except that novels need to be plausible, whereas the life of Jack Parsons, poet, magician and rocket pioneer, had no such constraint - AMERICAN SCIENTIST

STRANGE ANGEL could be a hybrid sired by GRAVITY'S RAINBOW out of FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM. Explosively fascinating - GLOBE & MAIL