Who Was Neil Armstrong?

“It is July 16, 1969. By 9 a.m. the temperature has hit a whopping ninety degrees.”

Edwards begins the book with a date of great historical significance: the launch date for the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, which serves as the climax of the narrative. This short sentence is followed by descriptive detail about the day’s intense heat. The diction “whopping” reinforces this intensity. The details and diction here increase the drama of the moment and help convey its importance.

“What if Apollo 11 makes it to the moon but then can’t get back to Earth?…So many things could go wrong.”

Both a rhetorical question and an ellipsis are used to heighten tension around the imminent blastoff of the Apollo craft. Edwards utilizes such rhetorical devices more in the book’s introduction to establish the emotional tone and suspense of the narrative in contrast with the more straightforward, educational tone of the chapters that follow.

“Only three years before Neil was born, in 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew nonstop across the Atlantic.”

Stressing how proximate Armstrong’s birth was to Lindbergh’s famous transatlantic flight contextualizes Armstrong within the history of flight. It also ties him rhetorically to Lindbergh, helping to support the book’s thematic arguments about The Significance of Teamwork and Collaboration in Large-Scale Endeavors.