Moondust: In Search of the Men who Fell to Earth

Not a technical book about the Apollo program by any means. The author goes around finding and interviewing all the surviving moonwalkers as of the time he was writing it (9) about the effect the event had on their lives. Some report massive changes in perspective about the Earth. Some feel massively betrayed by NASA, having taken part in something they felt was the first step in a direction and which was then not followed up on (be the reasons for that good or bad). There's pretty much as many reactions as there are moonwalkers.

But then, most fascinating to me was the difference between living the history and watching the history. Armstrong and Aldrin on Apollo 11 didn't really appreciate how much importance was projected on their mission and how much mythologization of the event was going on back home, with half a billion people watching them live (and indeed it was the first huge live media event of this type). They were just doing their jobs - and then the president gets on the line with them on the surface of the moon and they scramble to not make asses of themselves talking extemporaneously while lugging around hundreds of kg of equipment on their backs. And when they get back and are in isolation (as all the first moonwalkers were in case of living microbes on the moon) and are dealing with a constant parade of dignitaries outside their little window, eventually they gather the gravitas that the event had for the world at large. Aldrin turns to Armstrong and says "Neil, we missed it!"