I strongly recommend the book I cited in post 101.
It focuses on the political background of the Apollo program—lots of little known details of the decisions Nixon was facing.
The program was a big mess—once you master the details on exactly where the problems were everything starts to make sense.
Congress was ready to cut off NASA funding if they caught wind of the problems.
In academia they say “publish or perish”.
In NASA it was “go to the moon (or fake it) or perish”.
thank you. there have been some great resource recommendations in this thread.