Squyres book on Mars rovers

I've just finished Steve Squyres' _Roving Mars_, and can't recommend
it highly enough. It really gets across the nuts and bolts -- and the
emotional roller-coaster -- of planetary probe science and
engineering: submitting and revising proposal after proposal, putting
together the team, racing against a launch window while swatting bugs
in testing, holding your breath for launch and landing, and conducting
rover operations.

It's not the place to read about the scientific results from Spirit
and Opportunity, but you won't find a better (or better-written)
account of everything that went into getting those results (and why it
cost $800M). Nor will you find a more eloquent resolution of tired
manned-vs-unmanned squabbles than the book's closing lines:

"There are many things I could wish for our rovers, but in the end,
there's only one that matters. What I really want, more than anything
else, is boot prints in our wheel tracks at Eagle Crater."