Challenger

Archival Summary & Scope

Winner of the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and the Kirkus Nonfiction Prize.

From the *New York Times* bestselling author of *Midnight in Chernobyl* comes the definitive, "exhaustively researched" (*The Washington Post*) account of the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster.

Based on extensive new archival research, **Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space** revisits the tragic loss of all seven crew members, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, just seventy-three seconds into flight. Higginbotham reveals the full, untold story: tracing the ambitious origins of the shuttle program, the systemic issues of political cynicism and cost-cutting that led to ignored warning signs, and the dramatic investigation that followed.

Through the interwoven stories of the crew, engineers, and officials, this book masterfully blends human drama with scientific detail, offering a compelling narrative that exposes a critical turning point in history and the human cost of ambition.