Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story: The Iridium Story - How a Single Man Saved the World's Largest Satellite Constellation From Fiery Destruction - Brossura

Advance Praise for "Eccentric Orbits"
"Eccentric Orbits" is a remarkable work. I had known about Iridium but not about its fascinating history. John Bloom s writing style is attractive and the level of detail is astonishing. This was a page-turner for me! Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
Interested in giant, head-scratching miscalculations by a great American company? The power of one man to rescue the world s biggest deployment of low-earth satellites? A place where genius engineering meets a total lack of common sense? Then John Bloom s book about Motorola s multibillion-dollar debacle, Iridium, is for you. "Eccentric Orbits" is both a novelistic thriller and a cautionary tale, a page-turner about a reach for the heavens and a business primer on a near-fatal fall back to the earth. Julian Guthrie, author of "The Billionaire and The Mechanic"
John Bloom s "Eccentric Orbits," which tells the story of one of the most ambitious projects in the history of technology, is the most compelling book I have read in a long while. Bloom somehow coaxed the deepest thoughts and darkest secrets out of many satellite engineers, skeptical VCs, business royalty, inner-city tycoons, Italian marketers, Russian rocket launchers, Arabian princes, corporate CEOs, African leaders, Washington insiders, insurance giants, Pentagon brass, government lifers, politicians, and frustrated bankruptcy judges. This is a masterpiece of research and storytelling. If not for Bloom, one of the greatest stories of American ingenuity and bullheadedness would still lie scattered in thousands of documents and the memories of those who lived it. Gary Kinder, author of "Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea"
This is a monumental piece of non-fiction, not just for the breadth and depth of the research, but for its audacity: Bloom seeks to make technology and marketing and high finance dramatic and funny and instructive of the human conditionand succeeds. Until I read this, I had always assumed that my cell phone was created by something like spontaneous combustion; like one day, it just appeared between my right hand and my ear, as if it had always belonged there. Bloom has given all of usall billions of usthe back story on it, and what a strange, tangled, convoluted, fairly hilarious one it is. Jim Atkinson, "Texas Monthly" contributing editor
Build a better mousetrap, and the world will erect every possible obstacle to its success. That s the sobering lesson of John Bloom s book on the progress of a reliable, cheap, encrypted, worldwide mobile phone system to supermarket shelves. The exhilarating lesson is that it can be done if you have visionary geeks, hard-boiled veterans, retired capitalists, and the occasional eccentric rebellious bureaucrat determined to do it. This is high scientific journalism, exciting business journalism, and a rattling good tale. It even includes Nazis. John O Sullivan, author of "The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World"
Impeccably researched, and in smooth, easy prose, John Bloom interweaves fascinating historical trivia about the space race, satellites, and global communications with detail-filled personality snapshots and cringingly revealing, often disturbingly humorous, insights about the many ways big business can shoot itself in the foot. --John Brewer, former president and editor-in-chief, New York Times Syndicate and News Service

John Bloom is a veteran investigative journalist, a three-time finalist for the National Magazine Award and a Pulitzer Prize nominee. He is the author of nine books, including Evidence of Love, which won the Edgar Allan Poe Award. He lives in New York City.