The Right Stuff - Softcover

Wolfe, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099479370 ISBN 13: 9780099479376

Publisher: Vintage, 2005

Synopsis

A wildly vivid and entertaining chronicle of America's manned space program, from the author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

What is it asks Tom Wolfe, that makes a man willing to sit on top of an enormous Roman Candle...and wait for someone to light the fuse? Arrogance? Stupidity? Bravery? Courage? Or, simply, that quality we call 'the right stuff'?

A monument to the men who battled to beat the Russians into space, The Right Stuff is a voyage into the mythology of the American space program, and a dizzying dive into the sweat, fear, beauty and danger of being on the white-hot edge of history in the making.

Tom Wolfe at his very best... Learned, cheeky, risky, touching, tough, compassionate, nostalgic, worshipful, jingoistic...The Right Stuff is superb - New York Times Book Review

About this title

Review

Tom Wolfe began The Right Stuff at a time when it was unfashionable to contemplate American heroism. Nixon had left the White House in disgrace, the nation was reeling from the catastrophe of Vietnam, and in 1979--the year the book appeared--Americans were being held hostage by Iranian militants. Yet it was exactly the anachronistic courage of his subjects that captivated Wolfe. In his foreword, he notes that as late as 1970, almost one in four career Navy pilots died in accidents. "The Right Stuff," he explains, "became a story of why men were willing--willing?--delighted!--to take on such odds in this, an era literary people had long since characterized as the age of the anti-hero."

Wolfe's roots in New Journalism were intertwined with the nonfiction novel that Truman Capote had pioneered with In Cold Blood. As Capote did, Wolfe tells his story from a limited omniscient perspective, dropping into the lives of his "characters" as each in turn becomes a major player in the space program. After an opening chapter on the terror of being a test pilot's wife, the story cuts back to the late 1940s, when Americans were first attempting to break the sound barrier. Test pilots, we discover, are people who live fast lives with dangerous machines, not all of them airborne.

Wolfe traces Alan Shepard's suborbital flight and Gus Grissom's embarrassing panic on the high seas (making the controversial claim that Grissom flooded his Liberty capsule by blowing the escape hatch too soon). The author also produces an admiring portrait of John Glenn's apple-pie heroism and selfless dedication. By the time Wolfe concludes with a return to Yeager and his late-career exploits, the narrative's epic proportions and literary merits are secure. Certainly The Right Stuff is the best, the funniest, and the most vivid book ever written about America's manned space program. --Patrick O'Kelley

Review

"The Right Stuff is Wolfe's best book" (Sunday Times)

"It is Tom Wolfe at his very best...technically accurate, learned, cheeky, risky, touching, tough, compassionate, nostalgic, worshipful, jingoistic... The Right Stuff is superb" (New York Times Book Review)

"An exhilarating flight into fear, love, beauty and fiery death... magnificent" (People)

"Absolutely first class... Improbable as some of Tom's tales seem, I know he's telling it like it was" (Michael Collins, former astronaut)

"Tom Wolfe’, article: ‘You only had to look at him... or read such books as The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff to know that Tom Wolfe was like no other" (John Pye The Scotsman)

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0099479370
• ISBN 13: 9780099479376
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 448