Tom Wolfe

A wonderful novel and perfect book club choice, The Right Stuff is a wildly vivid and entertaining chronicle of America's early space programme. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY US ASTRONAUT SCOTT KELLY ‘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? 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 programme, 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

The Right Stuff

"What is it, I wondered, that makes a man willing to sit on top of an enormous Roman Candle, such as a Redstone, Atlas, Titan, or Saturn rocket, and wait for someone to light the fuse? I decided on the simplest approach possible. would ask a few of the astronauts and find out- The men had it. Yeager. Conrad. Grissom. Glenn. Heroes. The first Americans in space - battling the Russians for control of the heavens, putting their lives on the line. he women had it. While Mr Wonderful was aloft, it tore your heart out that the Hero's Wife, down on the ground, had to perform with the whole world watching. The Right Stuff. It's the quality beyond bravery, beyond courage. "

Laura Mauler

The moments of grandeur and weakness, the aspirations, and the problems of America's astronauts are revealed in an exploration of the dimensions of their inner lives in space, on the moon, and on the earth.

Sean Goodwin

Really enjoyable. Captures the hysteria around the space race and the catapulting of our first astronauts into eternal fame and glory. RIP Tom Wolfe.

Wynn Netherland

This is the origin story of the American Astronaut, how the role of the men in the manned space flight program evolved along with America's perception of them as champions in the Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union.

Jeremy Anderberg

There are a lot of books about the Space Race and the NASA of the late '50s and early '60s. None are quite like The Right Stuff.

Wolfe earned his chops during that same time as a journalist, experimenting with what he called "New Journalism" — a way of inserting more literary prose into his newsy stories. (Truman Capote, Hunter Thompson, and others of the era did this too.) The style is utterly unique in non-fiction, using eccentric punctuation, a lot of dialogue (including inner dialogue), and trying to get deep into the heads and psyches of his subjects.

In this particular book, those subjects were the Mercury 7 — the very first astronauts of America's budding space program. Before getting there, though, Wolfe looks at the test pilot mindset in general, using the incomparable Chuck Yeager as a case study. (The story of his breaking the sound barrier with a broken rib is, to my mind, one of the more memorable scenes in non-fiction literature.)

These guys had an indefinable quality that combines ego, courage, nonchalance, risk-taking . . . the right stuff. And the entirety of the book is about defining that quality. This is no science book; there's very little mechanical information. It's entirely about the characters.

The first three chapters blew me away. Like I said, I just have never encountered this type of writing in non-fiction. I was sucked in. Wolfe captured all my senses, describing the sights, sounds, smells, and even the nervous and kinetic energy of being a pilot and astronaut.

He also tells the stories of the wives, who had to play along and smile for the cameras and pretend that their family life was perfect. (It was not, but 1960s America wanted it to be.) I have to imagine some of the material for that astronaut wives show from a couple years back was pulled from here.

This book is a classic of non-fiction for a reason. It reads like fiction, and though I got a little tired of the style at times (excessive punctuation becomes less novel and more annoying as the pages keep turning), I was always drawn right back in with Wolfe's masterful descriptions of the astronauts' experiences. If you've not read The Right Stuff, do yourself a favor and get to it.

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Although at times, it was a little over-written, this book offers a very thorough insider's view of the personalities, character, and lifestyle of the pilots who became our first astronauts as well as the politics, historical perspective, and culture that shaped the early space program. 

In an age where space travel has become passe, I found it interesting to go back to a time in which space travel was everything. In fact, it was equated with national survival in the face of the malevolently powerful Soviet empire. That is particularly interesting in light of the fact that today, Americans are bringing Russians home in our shuttles and they are taking Americans to space in theirs.

I have a new respect for those early astronauts but unexpectedly also for military pilots in general. I knew it was dangerous, but never realized how dangerous a vocation it was (and likely still is) until I read this book.

The Right Stuff

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