Siddiqi, Asif. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2003.

First published by NASA in 2000 as Challenge to Apollo, these two volumes are the first comprehensive history of the Soviet-manned space programs covering a period of thirty years, from the end of World War II, when the Soviets captured German rocket technology, to the collapse of their moon program in the mid-1970s. Written by 2002 IDRF Fellow Asif Siddiqi. Buy from Amazon