Few things can better serve managers undertaking leadership roles in large, complex, technology-based organizations than knowing how other such organizations have coped with the problems that must be solved to achieve success. Yet few studies of the administrative records provide detailed case studies of how very large research and development programs have been managed, or what has worked and why. The same is true of large, nontechnical endeavors. We have Sapolsky's study of Polaris development, Hewlett and Anderson on the origins of the Atomic Energy Commission, Peck and Scherer on the weapons acquisition process, Sayles and Chandler on managing large systems, and with this book, Arnold Levine's Managing NASA in the Apollo Era. Dr. Levine's approach and his large investment of time to study the detailed record of documents and interviews, together with his institutional viewpoint, rather than one that is program-oriented, make this an important book. He takes the entire agency, rather than any single component or program, as the subject of his study, emphasizing those features that NASA shared with other federal agencies in the 1960s and with previous large developmental efforts. In addition, Levine seeks differences from other such efforts in the cause-effect coupling in NASA's approach to management. Specific administrative actions are placed within the context of the larger whole. While documenting and describing NASA's formal organizational structure, Levine concentrates on those key policy decisions that ultimately shaped the agency: reliance on the American industrial establishment, not as vendors, but as research and development partners; sharing decision-making with the centers to the fullest extent possible; avoidance of bureaucratic delays and inertia at headquarters; injection of the profit motive into a traditional cost-plus environment; consciously and continuously striving to retain NASA's freedom of action to move forward with strength in those areas necessary