Adam Higginbotham has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, and Smithsonian. He is the author of Midnight in Chernobyl, which was the winner of the William E. Colby Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. He lives with his family in New York City.

"Stunning . . . Challenger is a remarkable book. It manages to be a whodunit that stretches hundreds of pages, a heart-pounding thriller even though readers already know the ending. The passion and ideals at the heart of human spaceflight come through, which only adds to the tragedy of understanding how many chances there were to save the astronauts aboard. Our faith in the systems that run our world is really faith in our fellow man-a chilling reality to remember." -The Atlantic

Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

Pub date: 2026-01-27

Length: 576 pages