Inside Outer Space

DON THOMAS is a former NASA space shuttle astronaut who heads the Willard Hackerman Academy of Mathematics and Science at Towson University in Maryland. Thomas flew four shuttle missions -- three on Columbia and one on Discovery -- logging 44 days in space, 600 Earth orbits and 20 million miles of space travel.

His book recommendation is the story of another astronaut, Michael Collins.

"As one of the early astronauts, Mike Collins was one of my heroes as a young boy. . . . Collins was selected to be an astronaut in 1963 in NASA's third group of astronauts. He went on to fly three space missions, including the Apollo 11 mission that first landed humans on the moon in 1969. I flew a copy of this book ["Carrying the Fire"] along with me on space shuttle Columbia between July 1 and 17, 1997, completing 251 orbits of the Earth and traveling 6.3 million miles."