This work reopens a long-standing mystery about the role of German scientists in the USSR. Like American propoganda of the cold-war era, it presents the notion that the Russians owe all the good ideas in their later rockets to the German scientists.
The book fails to really prove this, simply assuming that information flowed only in one direction. Many of the ideas attributed to the German team, seen perhaps in a pencil sketch, are design concepts developed by Glushko during the 1930s. Sophisticated injectors, for example. It also does not make it clear that the G-1, G-2 and G-4 rockets were never built, they were only "paper rockets".
Real rockets are not designed on paper, certainly not in the 1950s. The work ignores the intensive engineering experiments of Glusko, who built and measured hundreds of rocket engines. Ultimately, Glusko's engines would be vastly more effience than the V-2 engine, and even more efficient than American engines of that time.
The notion that the R-7 rocket, that launched Sputnik, is just a cluster of G-4 rockets is absurd. It seems to be based almost entirely on the fact that the G-4 and the R-7 second stages are both cone-shaped.
In sprite of its problems, this book does present a lot of interesting photographs and material. Historians should read it, but keep in mind its possible neo-nationalist subtext.
A more balanced history of this period can be found in the work of CMU historian Dr. Asif Siddiqi. For example, "Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge". Siddiqi describes the working relationship between the German and Russian engineers without glorifying either party.