A thin plume of orange rising into the Soviet sky on October 4, 1957, carried aloft humankind's first artificial satellite. A 22-inch, 184-pound, beeping sphere, Sputnik ("Fellow Traveler") marked the beginning of a new chapter in the Cold War, where national prestige would be measured by a race in space. An incredible technological achievement in which all of humanity should have taken pride, the flight of Sputnik 1 and its successors (launched through 1961), was transformed into propaganda by the intense political posturing of the Cold War. For the Soviets, a supposedly technically backward nation, Sputnik instilled national pride; for the United States, watching their own puny Vanguard rockets fizzle and blow up on the launch pad, it enhanced fears of the growing Red Menace. While the satellite fell from orbit in January 1958, the word Sputnik became embedded in the American lexicon—symbolizing a period in time in which the United States...