This review refers to the Kindle edition of the book, where text is perfectly readable but the many illustrations included in the hardcover & paperback editions were omitted without notice! Too bad. Even in b/w, I would have liked them and blame publishers for not having taken them into account and Amazon for not signalling this more explicitly. In short, when you buy a Kindle edition be sure to understand what it misses (if anything) from the printed one. All this said, I found "Magnificent Desolation" a fascinating read. I was 16 when Mr Aldrin first walked on the moon along with Neil Armstrong and since then I have held a special affection in my heart for these Men of Space. More than that: the men who first set foot on another planet. (Yes, I know that technically speaking the Moon is not a planet: but I don't particularly care for the circumlocution "celestial body".) Airless and lifeless as it is, the moon is a small orb that since the apparition of man on earth has enormously influenced his life and musings; well, Buzz Aldrin was actually there, on that different world of beauty and void. I bet Ludovico Ariosto would have gladly traded his place with him, and so William Shakespeare, Dante and Edgar Allan Poe. Not to mention Albert Einstein and Jules Verne! So, in a way, what the men of Apollo 11 really did was to walk with the legs of those giants and see with the eyes of all mankind, changing a millennia-old dream to factual (if poetic) reality. In the book, the first three chapters are devoted to the mission and, since I had never previously heard the account of the moon voyage from the mouth of its protagonists, I was actually thrilled. I am now 57 but, believe me, I became the boy of 1969 again, so thank you, Mr. Aldrin! The rest of the book, contrary to what some others reviewers may think, also fascinated me immensely, because in it you discover a real man (and a good man, at that) behind the famed astronaut. Besides his ingenuity and endurance, modern man is also made of his "problems" and soft spots, and the long history of depression and alcoholism that Mr Aldrin endured, and from which emerged successfully, is one that I could have lived myself. His "blue funks" look so true in description, while the history of his marriages, womanizing and final love may teach a little something to everybody. Like Orson Welles used to say, he learnt how to start from maximum height and go right down to the bottom of the pit. Only, like the great American director, the man who had been first on the moon made another giant leap to start living again. And was successful, exactly like in any another Apollo flight.

This book starts out with the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 and takes it from there. You read about how Mr. Aldrin dealt with depression and alcoholism in the years after the historic moon landing. The book is very interesting until about the halfway mark. Then it seems to be all about his wife, Lois and Mr. Aldrin just briefly touching on stuff he's doing(skiing, working on his Mars Cycler, making appearances in t.v. shows, etc.) The book kind of lost me there. It seemed to drag and I found myself skimming just to get to anything interesting and to finish the book.
"Magnificent Desolation" tells the reader nothing of Mr. Aldrin's growing up years and does not go into detail about him being a fighter pilot or how the selection process to him becoming an astronaut went down. I guess that is all covered in Mr. Aldrin's first book, "Return to Earth".
Overall, an ok read.

There is another autobiography available to Amazon shoppers from the pen of Buzz Aldrin, "Return to Earth." Released in 1973, the first account gives us some inkling into the astronaut's difficulties upon his return to earth from the historic Apollo XI moon landing of 1969. One might say that the astronaut's disclosure of his stresses in 1973 was an attempt at closure, albeit a premature one. Unfortunately for Aldrin, in some ways his troubles were just intensifying. Astronaut Jim Lovell quipped on a television commentary some years ago, "Who remembers the second guy to fly solo across the Atlantic?" By all accounts Aldrin's status as second man down the ladder behind Neil Armstrong troubled him at the time of the moon landing and, as it turned out, for a long time afterward.

There is ambivalence in the very title "Magnificent Desolation," as it is not clear whether the phrase refers to outer space or Aldrin's inner space. Aside from a splendid narrative of his role in Apollo XI that opens the book, this is a work about the astronaut's adventures and misadventures post 1969, of which he had plenty of both. Little could he know, in 1973, that his first autobiography was not the final word, but simply a milepost along a hard road to health and wholeness.

Aldrin was an alcoholic, most likely before Apollo XI and certainly afterward, but the astronaut corps of the time was a hard drinking fraternity in which excess of that sort was scarcely visible. Moreover, his outstanding R&D efforts involving extravehicular dexterity on his Gemini XII flight with Lovell in 1966 made him respected, if not loved, within NASA, and his personal issues never seemed to have crossed the Apollo XI radar, except to the degree that NASA's inner circle did give considerable thought to his working relationships; the unflappable Armstrong proved to be the best fit for the overachieving, self-confident, and somewhat arrogant Aldrin. However, the challenge of post-Apollo life worried Aldrin and in the midst of the world-wide media frenzy after the moon flight , the famous `first man on the moon" stamp--bearing Neil Armstrong's image alone--was unveiled, reopening a long festering wound and sparking new excuses for self indulgence.

But beyond alcohol and hurt feelings, Aldrin simply did not know what to do with himself. He envied Armstrong's contentment with pure engineering and his gradual withdrawal to academic life. He became vaguely aware that his problems might be emotional in nature, even raising the issue of astronaut psychology obliquely to a conference of aerospace doctors. Most readers will recognize his symptoms as depressed mood; the difficulty then was incredulity among his friends and caregivers--including Aldrin himself--that a celebrated moonwalker could be so afflicted. Between depression and alcoholism, he embarked upon a series of impulsive, indulgent, and ill-advised decisions, including divorcing his wife and serving as something of an absentee landlord at Edwards Air Force Base, where he headed the test pilots' school. Sensing deterioration, in 1973, four years after Apollo XI, Aldrin decided to write his tell-all book about his depression and marital difficulties, though without mention of his drinking.

Aldrin's drinking continued unabated for the next half-dozen years. His self-report of the drinking years in this work is sadly similar to that of millions of alcoholics, except that as a member of the Apollo XI crew his trouble was fairly public knowledge. A period of sobriety led to a made-for-TV movie, after which the astronaut returned to drinking. At one point, a mere five years after Apollo XI, he was reduced to selling cars--and failed at that.

Many astronauts were profoundly and deeply affected by their Apollo moon excursions, not just Aldrin. Jim Irwin's post-flight quixotic search for Noah's Ark is one of the best known of a series of remarkable transformations. For Aldrin, depression and substance abuse--the latter finally brought under control in October, 1978--were in some respects the tip of the iceberg of his restless difficulties. For a man of high intelligence and technological brilliance, Aldrin was also highly imaginative and carried an entrepreneur's gene or two in his DNA. Perhaps of all the astronauts he best realized the unthinkable technical achievement of the Apollo Program, and grieved its eventual demise--less over his own future opportunities than for what we might call the humanitarian/scientific opportunities of the human species.

Aldrin reveals himself as a "big picture" sort of guy. He discloses this about himself almost unwittingly, from his narrative of the projects, visions, and ideas he has expounded to about anyone who would listen, down to the present day. He designed, for example, a concept he called "the cycler," a means of using permanent orbiting space vehicles as "shuttlers" between the earth and the moon, and eventually Mars. But the Martian cycler best illustrates Aldrin's frustration: NASA's Tom Paine told him in 1984 that taxpayers would not fund such ventures, and as Aldrin himself ruefully admits, he began to earn a reputation as a guy with "harebrained ideas." [180]

Gradually Aldrin came down to earth, figuratively speaking, through the 1980's, indebted in no small part to the energy and affection of his second wife, and gradual improvement in the treatment of his chronic depression. Although ever the wide-eyed enthusiast, he seemed to come to peace with a recreated persona as general spokesman for the exploration of space. He kept himself in the public eye, appearing on multiple television programs and interviews, including "The Simpsons." His lifestyle appeared to some as self-aggrandizement, but in my view his behavior spoke more of "don't forget me and my profession." At the end of the day, the reader is more likely to conclude that Aldrin, considering his inner demons, warts, and a uniquely perplexing place in the history books, is no defiant space cowboy, but rather, a complex man who struggled in black-and-white worlds.

This is the book to read If you want to know what it's like to be an astronaut. To know what it's like to walk on the moon when you're young then walk the earth for the rest of your life with that moment of glory and bliss forever crouched on your shoulder. The story of Buzz Aldrin is an exceptionally human story of an exceptional human being. I admire the man and his openness.

A great read, I had heard of stories about Buzz, but this book explains it all. As it has been said behind every great man is a good woman.

Very informative read of the actual feelings Buzz had as he embarked on his journey to land on the moon, and some of the mission surprises they had not trained for, once there. The stigma of being the "second" man on the moon, which stayed with him throughout his life, and his fight with himself and alcoholism, as he tried to rationalize his life back on earth, are very openly exposed.