The Right Stuff [THIRD PRINTING, VINTAGE 1979]

Wolfe, Tom

Published by Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 1979

About this Item

Fine condition beige cloth boards with facsimile gold front cover author autograph, blue and red spine lettering, and silver spine decorations contained in a fine condition non price-clipped color illustrated dust jacket. Includes List of Other Books by Tom Wolfe; Author Dedication; Epilogue and Author's Note. Two formerly dog-eared pages; the pages are otherwise in fine condition and the spine/binding is in exceedingly tight and perfectly square condition (see photographs). " 'As to just what this ineffable quality was . well, it obviously involved bravery. But it was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life. The idea seemed to be that any fool could do that, if that was all that was required, just as any fool could throw away his life in the process ." Men first flew into space in 1961, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of that adventure: namely, the perceptions and goals of the astronauts themselves, aloft and during certain remarkable odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner world of the early astronauts, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Gus Grisson, and their confreres, that Tom Wolfe describes with his extraordinary powers of empathy. He shows us the hidden olympus to which all ambitious combat and test pilots aspired, the top of the pyramid of the right stuff. And we learn the nature of the ineffable pilot's grace without which all else meant nothing. We see the men whose achievements dominated the flying fraternity in the late 1950s as the space age began, men like Chuck Yeager and Joe Walker, pilots of the first rocket planes, most notably the X-1 and the X-15. The selection of the Mercury astronauts in 1959 shook up the fraternity as thoroughly as had Yeager's breaking of the sound barrier twelve years before. Public excitement and concern over the space race with the Soviets immediately elevated the seven astronauts to the uneasy eminence of heroes, long before their first flight. At the time, the press depicted them as Flying Saints buttressed by Doris Day wives, or else as robots dialed up and down by NASA engineers. After months with astronauts and their families and others in and around the space program in Houston, Cape Kennedy, and elsewhere, Wolfe found the truth to be profoundly different from either stereotype. Through his account we become privy to moments of cosmic dimension and low comedy, as well as deep emotion, that Mission Control never knew about. We are with the astronauts and their wives during the flights and afterwards, as they deal with the unknowns and dangers of both rocket flights into space and the fame and celebrity no one had trained them for. Nor was the public glory ever sufficient in itself. We see the seven men, in the very moment of their idolization by the outside world, struggling to gain the respect of their peers within the flying fraternity, even to the point of altering NASA's original conception of the astronaut's role - in keeping with the unspoken prerequisites of the right stuff. Because Wolfe presents the astronauts at every turn as full-blooded human beings, he gives their triumphs a dimension that raises them above the technological. In the process the adventure itself - man's attempt to explore his galaxy - comes alive for the first time." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.

Seller Inventory # 007416

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Right Stuff [THIRD PRINTING, VINTAGE 1979]
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux, New York
• Publication Date: 1979
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Kanai, Kiyoshi (jacket design)
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 3rd Printing
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine