Description: "What does it take to be an astronaut? First published in 1979, Tom Wolfe's astounding book The Right Stuff answers this question and more, exploring both the mental and the physical sacrifices that must be made by individuals entering space. Wolfe tells the stories of the pilots, engineers, and astronauts involved in Project Mercury (1958#19;1963), the United States' first human spaceflight program."--
Brief description: Tom Wolfe (1930-2018) was one of the founders of the New Journalism movement and the author of contemporary classics like The Right Stuff and Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, as well as the novels The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, and I Am Charlotte Simmons. As a reporter, he wrote articles for The Washington Post, the New York Herald Tribune, Esquire, and New York Magazine, and is credited with coining the term, "The Me Decade." Among his many honors, Tom was awarded the National Book Award, the John Dos Passos Award, the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence, the National Humanities Medal, and National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lived in New York City.
Review Quotes:
"Technically accurate, learned, cheeky, risky, touching, tough, compassionate, nostalgic, worshipful, jingoistic . . . The Right Stuff is superb." --The New York Times Book Review
"One of the most romantic and thrilling books ever written about men who put themselves in peril." --The Boston Globe "An exhilarating flight into fear, love, beauty, and fiery death . . . Magnificent." --People "Absolutely first class . . . Improbable as some of Wolfe's tales seem, I know he's telling it like it was." --The Washington Post Book World "Crammed with inside poop and racy incident . . . fast cars, booze, astro groupies, the envies and injuries of the military caste system . . . Wolfe lays it all out in brilliantly staged Op Lit scenes." --Time "Splendid . . . It shows our propensity to manufacture heroes, and, just as quickly, to forget them; it shows how a scientific program was exploited for political advantage; it provides a revealing character study of seven exceptional Americans." --The Saturday Review