About this title: Much of Tom Wolfe's compelling story of the first astronauts--Grissom, Conrad, Glenn, and others--focuses on Chuck Yeager, the brave test pilot who first broke the sound barrier and flew in subspace. While never an astronaut, Yeager epitomized the character and qualities Wolfe saw in the astronauts of the Mercury program.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Cape, London
Date Published: 1979
ISBN-13:9780224014434ISBN:0224014439
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. [7], 437p.; 23 cm. Originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979. Ex-Library expected imperfections. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Cape, London
Date Published: 1979
ISBN-13:9780224014434ISBN:0224014439
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. damaged book cover. [7], 437p.; 23 cm. Originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979. read more
Edition: First Thus
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Books, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1980
ISBN-13:9780553138283ISBN:0553138286
Description: Good. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Pages tanned. Shelfwear to cover. Name written on first page. SYNOPSIS: " It's a quality beyond macho. Beyond bravery. Cool courage! It's men like Chuck Yeager, fastest man on earth, Pete Con rad who laughed himself out of the running; Gus Grissom who almost lost it when his capsule sank. And John Glenn, the only space traveler whose apple-pie image wasn't a lie.". read more
"Having just about got over I Am Charlotte Simmons, I wanted to remind myself why Tom Wolfe was once considered an important writer. And my faith was restored. While his style is still a little too jarring with its vernacular stylings, here it is put to good use. Wolfe does a brilliant job of conveying the culture of elite military pilots. Having established the fighter-jock spirit he shows how it was undermined in the early days of the space programme, and then how it was gradually restored so that astronaut became the new pinnacle to which a pilot could aspire. A fascinating and detailed story, with naturally huge and over-the-top characters, suitably voiced by a naturally huge and over-the-top writer.
(Interesting to see that Wolfe was using his the frankly disturbing phrase "loamy loins" - scattered rather too liberally through I Am Charlotte Simmons - as early as The Right Stuff. Try not to let that put you off.)"
"An interesting and fascinating look at the dawn of the space age, but more importantly, the bonds between the original pilots. Wolfe explores what was so special about the men, why they did what they did, and what was their role in the larger American narrative.
The book is best summed up by this telling quote: " No, the idea here (in the all-enclosing fraternity) seemed to be that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment."
As a writer, I found the sections about the press and Life Magazine especially funny, but enjoyed the book throughout. +1 for Tom Wolfe."
"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."
"Has it really been 40 years since humans first walked on the moon? Four decades. Will it ever happen again? What courage.
Yet, before there was Apollo 11, before there were even the Gemini space missions, there were the original Mercury seven astronauts: Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Carpenter, Cooper, Schirra, Slayton. We all knew their names; knew what they looked like in their shiny, silver space suits; knew they had true grit.
Like every red-bloodied boy growing up in this country, I dreamed of being a space man too. Oh, what adventure! But did I have the right stuff? Reading Tom Wolfe's fun book, I soon realized, I did not, could not, or should not. The book begins with Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier and works its way behind-the-scenes into the daring, cavalier stories of the first men into space.
Beyond heroes, these guys were also just a bit nuts. My feet will be probably always stuck here on terra firma."
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