This is the story of the people and events of Projects Mercury and Gemini, told through hundreds of unpublished and rare color and black-and-white photographs. Unlike other publications, which have illustrated the Space Race with well-known and easily accessible images, this history draws from the authors' private library of more than 125,000 high-resolution photos of the first two U.S. manned space programs from 1961 to 1966.  Collected over a lifetime from public and private sources--including NASA archives, fellow photo collectors, retired NASA and news photographers, and auction houses--the images document American space missions of the Cold War era more comprehensively than ever before. Devoting a chapter to each flight for the first time, the authors also include richly-detailed captions, providing new insight into one of America's greatest triumphs. Foreword by Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Stafford, USAF (Ret.). “[Bisney and Pickering] have collected an impressive selection of photographs. The book’s massive assortment . . . does a wonderful job of illustrating the culture and experience of the space race.”—mentalfloss.com “Together, [ Spaceshots and Snapshots of Projects Mercury and Gemini and Moonshots and Snapshots of Project Apollo ] are a treat for any space buff and, for the true believers, a reminder that even greater journeys may lie just ahead.”— American Scientist “An enjoyable book, offering a different look at familiar missions.”— The Space Review “In resurrecting many obscure photos the authors have provided a valuable, and highly desirable, compendium of outstanding pictures from an age when each flight saw the release of perhaps fewer than one-hundred stock shots.”— Spaceflight “The visual narrative employed by the authors reminds us not only of the sublimity of astronaut photography, but also the thousands of people who made spaceflight possible.”— Quest “From a space enthusiast’s perspective, Pickering’s book feeds an interest in the ‘not-so-common’ NASA image that everyone has seen before.”— The Pantagraph “A wonderful collection of rarely seen photographs that true space buffs will enjoy. The captions are worth their weight in space-fact gold.”—Richard W. Orloff, coauthor of Apollo: The Definitive Sourcebook “If you think you’ve seen every cool photo from the pioneering days of NASA, think again! J. L. Pickering and John Bisney have combed the archives . . . to create an extraordinary visual record that will delight and surprise even the most hard-core space enthusiast.”—Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts As long-time manned spaceflight enthusiasts, we noticed that almost every book on the subject has drawn from the same commonly-available NASA photos, so a certain amount of image fatigue can eventually set in. As a result, readers have not been exposed to a much broader range of photos that provide a far richer context of how we accomplished our early manned conquest of space.   It was our primary goal to provide a much more comprehensive look - quite literally - at the people, equipment, processes and locations involved in this great adventure than has been available until now. It's sort of like going way beyond the "greatest hits" album, although we do include what we believe is the most famous image from each flight to help orient the reader. We also realized that the captions in most space books don't provide extensive descriptions, so we went into significantly greater detail, which means the captions become something of a narrative. That helped with another goal, which was to identify as many of the rank-and-file space workers pictured as possible, since they are rarely given their due. We also enjoyed meeting and getting input from many of these people, as well as from a number of astronauts. So putting this book together really became a labor of love intended to share our mutual enthusiasm for this amazing piece of history.   John Bisney is an author and journalist who covered the space program for more than thirty years for CNN, the Discovery Channel, and SiriusXM Radio. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.    J. L. Pickering is a manned space flight historian who has been archiving rare sp