RIGHT STUFF Paperback – March 4, 2008

Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book, “The Right Stuff,” chronicles the diverging research of high-altitude rocket planes and spaceflight from the early 1950s through Project Mercury, contrasting the Mercury Seven astronauts with test pilots at Edwards AFB and Naval Air Station Patuxent River, with Chuck Yeager standing out as exemplifying the “right stuff” even though he was not chosen for the space program. Wolfe writes in a somewhat conversational style, working to capture the mentality of test pilots of that era and how it defined what it meant to be a pilot for generations to come, much as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and others did for pilots of the early twentieth century. Wolfe further evokes the heady emotion of the days of Mercury, when the immediacy of the Cold War turned the Space Race into a battlefront of sorts and the astronauts into Single Combat Warriors to whom the public paid homage. However, Wolfe points out that the test pilots at Edwards were skeptical of the space program, particularly as those running it initially conceived of the pilot as little more than a passenger in a capsule. Meanwhile, the test pilots in the high desert were flying rocket planes to altitudes that required the same skills as a spacecraft, such as control of attitude jets since the air was too thin – or nonexistent – for the plane’s control surfaces to work as the plane had crossed the boundary into space. Despite these achievements, the astronauts captured the public’s imagination and eventually succeeded in using their public positions to regain some of their status as pilots, though the heady days of Mercury did not last into the Gemini and Apollo programs, where spaceflight became more routine as astronauts were longer regaled as Single Combat Warriors.The style and success of Wolfe’s book ensured its adaptation and Hollywood has done so twice, first in Philip Kaufman’s 1983 film and again in the 2020 television series from National Geographic. This Vintage Classics copy is a nice paperback edition with a great pop-art cover and an introduction from Astronaut Scott Kelly that helps to capture of the legacy of “The Right Stuff.” Something appears to have gone wrong during the formatting process, however, as there are several typographical errors throughout the book (extraneous letters jumbled in the middle of words, words divided by a hyphen as if they were meant to be split between two lines, and multiple instances of the number 1 in place of an “l” or an “I”). These occur often enough to be noticeable, but thankfully Wolfe’s narrative is engrossing and makes up for it.

This is a people-oriented look at America's entry into space. It begins with test pilots in the late 1940s and into the 1950s, especially with the guy who broke the sound barrier, Chuck Yeager. Then, after America's space program gets a jolt from the USSR's launching of the Sputnik, the story proceeds through Project Mercury to the last Mercury mission in 1963.Be advised, Tom Wolfe does not give us a comprehensive account of Project Mercury. The astronauts, their wives, NASA people, Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, and a few other characters play roles in the story, and sometimes--particularly regarding the astronauts and their wives--the focus on them is close. But a great amount of material regarding the Mercury missions is omitted or is given only cursory examination. Obviously there is more to the history of America's early space program than the people. Even so, I doubt if the formal history, THIS NEW OCEAN: A HISTORY OF PROJECT MERCURY, includes the information about people that Wolfe includes. I may change my mind after reading THIS NEW OCEAN, but for now I think both books are necessary for a complete picture.Also be advised, THE RIGHT STUFF is not written in the conventional style of historical narration. Wolfe's style is light and often witty. He uses jargon, colorful figures of speech, and hyperbole. With amazon's "Look Inside" feature, I read the first pages of THIS NEW OCEAN. Its prose is conventional nonfiction, like something found on the front page of a newspaper. Wolfe's prose is like something found in editorial pages or in a breezy novel.There are no footnotes and no index. In his "Author's Note" at the end, Wolfe provides a brief bibliography.Many of Wolfe's paragraphs are too long, but this is the only thing I condemn unequivocally as a flaw. For history I do prefer straightforward factual narration, not flippancy, and if I were writing this only to myself, I would consider that flippancy a flaw. Nevertheless, the acclaim this book has received indicates that most other readers are not bothered by Wolfe's style. So you will probably not consider it a flaw.Though some of Wolfe's details are inaccurate, details are soon forgotten anyway, and for this book I think they are not worth harping about. I give him five stars because of his revealing portrayals of characters. They are accurate enough, I think, and they will be remembered.P.S. July 30, 2012:I tried reading THIS NEW OCEAN: A HISTORY OF THE MERCURY PROJECT, which is NASA's official history of the Mercury Project. It was tedious, made more so by its lack of a list of abbreviations and an index. Though John Catchpole's PROJECT MERCURY was written with the same matter-of-fact, term-paper prose, it had a list of abbreviations and an index and was more readable. Though I had to work to get it and though I had to pay a steep price for his book, Catchpole at least gave me the information that Tom Wolfe left out.

Essa é a versão original, excelente. Fuja de releituras sensacionalistas, como a disponivel em um certo serviço de streaming (não é o Prime) que despreza os fatos em prol de uma estória mais apelativa. O filme dos anos 80 é bem mais próximo ao livro e também vale a pena.

Brilliant. Loved it, cover to cover. What incredible brave heroes these men were that opened up that great frontier that has subsequently revealed so much to us regarding Life.

una lectura necesaria para descubrir los aportes de la carrera espacial

Very lively storytelling

I bought this for my wife who is not a space person at all... despite me bringing her to some of the best air and space museums in the world. But after she read this book it really opened her eyes.