First: The New History of Gagarin and the Space Race / Stephen Walker ; Translated from English. — Moscow: Alpina Non-Fiction, 2025. — 578 pages + 16 pages included. ISBN 978-5-00139-664-2 The race between two superpowers for supremacy in manned spaceflight was so dramatic that Stephen Walker, who dedicated a book to it, finds it necessary to assure the reader: all of this is not fiction. Indeed, behind the amazing, thrilling plot lies years of work in archives, personal meetings with participants, hundreds of hours of interviews with specialists involved in preparing the first spaceflights both in the USSR and the USA, conversations with Russian and American cosmonauts. Although the central figure in the narrative is Yuri Gagarin, Walker draws parallels between him and Alan Shepard, two candidates for the first spaceflight, as well as between Sergey Pavlovich Korolev and Wernher von Braun, the rocket creators. It seems we know everything about Gagarin. But the secrets revealed in this book, kept for decades, and eyewitness testimonies never before given in interviews, allow adding color to the portrait of the most famous Russian in the world. UDC 629.78-057"1934/1968" Gagarin Yu. A. BBK 39.68(2Rus)dGagarin Yu.A.