Tom Wolfe's take on the fighter pilots who became the vanguard of America's space race is an eye-opener if you are not already aware of the background. These risk-taking envelope-pushing jocks are strapped into chairs bolted onto rockets and pinged into space by inordinately large and expensive rockets. The first flights are flown by dogs and monkeys! These frontiersmen of the infinity are more passenger than pilot, much to the amusement of their test pilot peers who aren't involved.

The risks are immense but the astronaut has no sense (however misguided that sense always has been) of being in control of his own destiny. One can image furnishing them with a plastic steering wheel and fake gear stick such as might satisfy the six year old driving daddy's car. The macho, Dan Dare, image is boiled down to "have you got the guts to sit on top of a few thousand tonnes of highly inflammable explosive liquid oxygen rocket fuel and hope nothing goes wrong?"

This is not steering some harrassed space racer into the intricate belly of the death star by skill and chutzpah. But it is some heavy kind of courage in the face of likely death. The right stuff is still the self-obsessed megalomaniac wrong stuff. ( )

(#50 in the 2008 Book Challenge)

Good GRIEF, somebody please remind me about this the next time I think I will read a Tom Wolfe book. I seem to read one about every 15 years and in between I forget what an unpleasant experience I find it. I cannot! Take! The exclamation points! I'm one of those people who, constitutionally, cannot ignore an exclamation point on the printed page, so reading this was like being shouted at for great lengths of time. As everyone in the free world already knows, this is Tom Wolfe's book about the Mercury Space program, focusing on the personalities of the test pilots and the social significance of beating the Russians into space, or you know, failing to do that. I'm sure I've seen the movie countless times, mostly in parts on cable, but I had never read the book and that didn't seem right. I'm not even sure it seems right now, either, but I will say that for a book that I found almost painful to read, I have absolutely no doubt it informs just about every image we have of the space race and NASA in popular culture. So that part is impressive.

Grade: I don't even know.
Recommended: This is one of those books where I feel like I gained something in the end, but the process of getting there was almost unbearable. ( )

The 1983 motion picture “Right Stuff” is one of my all-time favorites. The movie recounts with a lot of humor and insight, the personal stories of the first Astronauts and their wives during the epic of the American Mercury Space Program.
Wolfe is looking for the answer to the question: “What makes a man brave or crazy enough to be hurled into Space on top of a huge rocket?”
The answer: To have the “Right Stuff”, an out of this world, macho Coolness.
I saw the movie several times and even learned a lot of its splendid “one – liners” by heart at the time.
I knew that it was an adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book but I never came to read it. I did however read the biography of Chuck Yeager, the test pilot who first crossed the sound barrier and who played a major role in the movie. It was an interesting read but not more than that either.

Only when “The Right Stuff” appeared as a novelty in the 2009 Folio Society’s catalogue did I finally acquire and read it.

The Right Stuff is the story of the pilots engaged in U.S. Mercury program.
In the first chapters, Wolfe introduces us to the personal stories of the test pilots. We are following their very risky lives as well as the psychological strain it brings to their wives.
Wolfe has extensively researched his subject by interviewing the pilots and their families and it shows in his descriptions what the “right stuff” of man and wife are made of. The introduction of these modern heroes culminates in Chuck Yeager’s successful attempt to break the sound-barrier.

We then switch to the selection process of the pilots for America’s first Space Program Mercury. Wolfe contrasts the selected “Mercury Seven” with the Edwards base test pilots, among which was Chuck Yeager.

Yeager and other top pilots seem to have been shut out of the astronaut program after it was decided to only select college-degreed pilots. We can suspect their disappointment even though astronauts are installed on top of the rockets for mere promotional reasons. The first crewmembers would not actually fly the spacecraft and the chimpanzee specimen preceded the human spacemen!

In the last part, we follow the first space successes. Shepard goes first for just a peep in space and comes down a hero with ticket tape parade, White House visit and all that. After that it is the turn of Grissom. The capsule is lost at sea when he exists prematurely. No hero welcome for him! Third up and first orbital flight is John Glenn and again we go trough the whole Hero – Media circus. The next astronauts are…, what is their name again? As the media attention is drawn to the Vietnam war and the next - even better- Apollo moon program, the heroes receive less and less attention.
Having the right stuff is no longer news.

The Right stuff is a pleasure to read. It is interesting, witty and intelligent and at some moments hilarious. A sure recommendation.

One of my favorite books. Wolfe's history of the early space program is a book not to be missed. You'll be hooked from the first page. Then follow it up with the movie which is almost as good! ( )

The Right Stuff is one of my all-time favorite movies, and after watching it dozens of times I finally read the book. As books tend to be, it was a lot more in-depth exploring the history of space flight from the test pilots attempting to break the sound barrier in the 1940's through the end of the Mercury program in the 1960's. Full of stories, facts, and connections this book is also written in an engaging style. A must of anyone interested in the space program or 20th-Century History. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed the first two books I read by Tom Wolfe, A Man In Full & Bonfire of the Vanities. I really enjoy the sweeping backgrounds that Wolfe unfolds his views of what is right and wrong in American life. I had this in mind going into reading this book, a book in which I’ve seen the movie adaptation for at least 25 times, if not more, and as I put the book down, finished, I felt maybe a trifle disappointed.

The mid fifties through the early sixties ushered in the golden era of the jet age and this is the background which the book is set against. Wolfe contrasts NASA’s Project Mercury against the Air Force’s X-1 project and how the first seven NASA astronauts are viewed through the eyes of the public and their counterpart pilots. How we, as Americans viewed these seven as our protectors against the Russian space program. A space program, that by putting the first satellite along with the first man and woman into orbit, sent shivers through the American population that we would be going to bed under a communist moon and there would be fleets of Russian cosmonauts hurling nuclear bombs onto American soil from miles above, out of reach.

I really enjoyed Wolfe’s detailed accounts of John Glenn’s and Scott Carpenter’s 3 orbits as well as Gordon Cooper’s 34 hours in space. I really felt like I was in the capsule hearing the noises of the cockpit and experiencing the forces applied to their bodies as they hurtled through space. One unexpected outcome is not feeling as scared of early space travel. Seriously, that is some way old technology that was throwing these astronauts up 130 miles above the ground at speed in-excess of 5k mph. But, I don’t see myself wanting to sign up for the next Space Shuttle flight.

One thing for sure, I don’t think I ever want to see the word ziggurat again! ( )

Being one who was at a young age during the advent of the manned space program, watching in awe as these heroes of mine took flight, I cannot say enough positive things about this book. It captures the era wonderfully - the gritty heroics and swaggering confidence embodied in the space program of the time. The original astronauts are brought to life in multiple dimensions. This book is a joy to read - absolutely excellent. ( )

Please see my review at http://www.curledup.com/rightstu.htm ( )

A riveting look inside the world of the early test pilots and the highly lauded Mercury 7; the United States' first astronauts who became national heroes as the face of the race against the Soviets.

These days a space shot is hardly acknowledged, but in the early days each launch was a national event. "The Right Stuff" provides a great look inside the pilots' lives and gives a great idea of how things felt to the nation and the astronauts. ( )

Mercury Space Program ( )

This is my favorite book about astronauts. Of course, it is the only book about astronauts that I will ever read, so that isn't the strongest praise. But it is perfect for a general reader like me looking for an entertaining history of America's early space program.

Wolfe definitely keeps the tale interesting. He focuses on the personal, rather than the technical and administrative, aspects of the Mercury space program and the first seven astronauts involved. He follows the seven through their early careers, mostly as test pilots, through each of their turns in a Mercury capsule.

The most remarkable part of the story is the connection Wolfe makes between fighter jet pilots and astronauts. Having grown up in the NASA age, I did not know that the Air Force had a competing rocket program -- a program that managed to send pilots several miles into space and then have them actually land the aircraft back on earth -- before it was scuttled in favor of NASA's moon missions.

The only drawback of the book is Wolfe's Gonzo journalism style, which much have been refreshing and bold back in 1979. Now, the hipper-than-thou tone is a little tired and can get exasperating.
( )

This book was my introduction to Tom Wolfe – and what an introduction it was.

The country was mired in a black hole. President Nixon had resigned the Office of the President in disgrace. There was the continuing debacle in Iran. The anti-hero was king.
Who would have guessed a book about old-fashioned heroism could capture the public’s attention?

Yet that is exactly was Wolfe penned. Beginning with the early test pilots and then proceeding to NASA’s Mercury program’s assault on the final frontier – space. A tale of good, old-fashioned American heroism; a thought, which to many in 1979 that was foreign, or at best, long-forgotten.

The book was controversial. As a New Journalist, Wolfe inserted himself into the lives of his "characters" as each in turn becomes a major player in the space program. It was a true story that tintillated the reader’s imagination. No novel could have done it better.

Beginning with 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. Anyone who has ever read it will never forget its Blue Uniform litany. Test pilots, we discover, are people who live fast lives with dangerous machines on the edge. I recall having to punch myself to be reminded that I was not reading a book about the stock brokerage business.

Although Wolfe’s command of the English language is unparalleled, this edition is enhanced by the inclusion of images culled from Life and Look magazines, NASA and the Library of Congress. The photos chronicle the lives of the people and the social and political climate that created our country’s nascent space program.

The Right Stuff is my favorite book. Tom Wolfe is my favorite author. This edition is a tribute to both. Yet more than that, it is a tribute to the people and the spirit that made this story possible.

Penned by the Pointed Pundit
August 24, 2006
8:25:16 AM ( )

Fantastic book about fighter jocks and the seven astronauts. As I recall, I was crying with emotion and simultaneously laughing at myself. ( )

Tom outdid himself here. Must have been the subject.. Great movie too. ( )

I found the story and the history absolutely fascinating. Imagine where the space program would be now if it wasn't for the Cold War? ( )

check out the para on righteousness! what a way with words ( )

Another oldie, but goodie. If you've never read this fascinating account of the early space program, you're in for a treat. Chock full of anecdotal tidbits about the different astronauts and pilots lives; it reads like a gossip column of the early 1960s. ( )

even though he is not my favorite author, i love piloting stories, and this is a very interesting read ( )

On Tuesday October 14th 1947, Chuck Yeager flew into the history books as the first man to break the sound barrier; he did this with one arm almost completely immobilized because of the two ribs he'd cracked when he rode his horse straight into a gate while drunk two nights before (though of course, he didn’t tell anyone about his injury until afterwards). This book caused a sensation on publication for its amazingly intimate view of the American Space Program, and Tom Wolfe's trademark bombastic journalism style seems as fresh here now as it ever was. The film was good, but the book is better. Read this now, it's FANTASTIC. ( )

Noted author Tom Wolfe documents the early astronauts. He exposes the friction between the 'real' pilots (like Chuck Yeager) and the 'spam in a can' (Astronauts). Much more detailed than the movie (which didn't even include Pete Conrad and Neil Armstrong). ( )

There are not too many historical novels, or perhaps non-fiction novels about astronauts, and this is one. Done in a sort of epic, Micheneresque style, with a more focused scope, this looks at the crazy and crazy brave pilots, who become important parts of the American space program.

A fairly straightforward message is contained in this book 'these guys are American heroes'. ( )

7e; fl. 19,90 ( )