A House in Space
Henry S. F. Cooper Jr.
ISBN 0-586-04762-X
A House in Space is about the the US Skylab programme. Skylab was a sort of interim programme that NASA used to learn about the long term effects of living in space. It was made primarily of parts left over from the Apollo moon landing programme. Skylab was visited by three sets of three astronauts in the first half of the 1970s.
Rather then concentrating on the overall aims or a detailed chronology of the individual missions, the book takes us thorough a typical day on board the station. To describe the activites throughout the day, it takes incidents from each of the three crews, contrasting their different reactions to the daily hurdles which had to be overcome. This graphically illustrates the problems of designing a spacecraft to be a home rather than just temporary accomodation. Many of the more interesting incidents feature the third crew. Of the three crews, they were the most vocal and critical about what they saw as the station's shortcomings, possibly because of their extended stay.
I've yet to read a book which better describes the day to day problems of living in space. I believe that it is currently out of print, but you should be able to find it second hand via Amazon, which is where I got mine. Even if you have only a passing interest in Skylab or spaceflight in general then I heartily recommend that you hunt down a copy.