Yaroslav Golovanov was born in 1932 into an acting family. In 1956 he graduated from the rocket department of the Moscow Higher Technical University. Bauman and worked for two years at a research institute, whose scientific director was academician M. V. Keldysh, then for more than 40 years at the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. Main area of interest: history of science and astronautics. Author of more than 20 scientific, fiction and prose books, published in 25 languages. The three-volume “Notes of Your Contemporary” covers almost half a century of the author’s life and is perhaps the most popular work of Yaroslav Golovanov for the widest range of readers, since it contains everything from anecdotes to portraits of celebrities, from space secrets to caustic criticism of the morals of our days. First The volume of “Notes”, which begins with a description of the funeral of J.V. Stalin, talks about fun student pranks, the beginning of work at a research institute and the first steps in journalism. Topics of the first 50 notebooks: sailing with fishermen in the tropical Atlantic, a trip to Hungary, meeting Yu. Gagarin and G. Titov, travel in the Pamirs and Tien Shan, Paris, Pyotr Kapitsa and Lev Landau, “Bigfoot”, mischievous travels along the Pinega River, the Baikonur Cosmodrome, adventures in Georgia, the beginning of work on the main book - “Korolev. Facts and Myths" and hundreds of other very diverse and unexpected notes, facts, observations, quotes.