ISBN13: 9780312427566</br>Notes: 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!</br></br>Product Description</br></br><p><b>From "America's nerviest journalist" (<i>Newsweek</i>)--a breath-taking epic?? a magnificent adventure story?? and an investigation into the true heroism and courage of the first Americans to conquer space. "m Wolfe at his very best" (<i>The New York Times Book Review</i>)</b><br><b></b><br>Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon?? but until now"ew people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely?? what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space?? on the moon?? and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this?? the inner life of the astronauts?? that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers?? that made <i>The Right Stuff </i>a classic.</p></br></br>Amazon.com Review</br></br>Tom Wolfe began <I>The Right Stuff</I> at a time when it was  unfashionable to contemplate American heroism. Nixon had left the White House in disgrace?? the nation was reeling from the catastrophe of Vietnam?? and  in 1979--the year the book appeared--Americans were being held hostage by Iranian militants. Yet it was exactly the anachronistic courage of his subjects that captivated Wolfe. In his foreword?? he notes that as late  as 1970?? almost one in four career Navy pilots died in accidents. "ht Stuff</I>??"he explains?? "ecame a story of why men were willing--willing?--delighted!--to take on such odds in this?? an era literary people had long since characterized as the age of the  anti-hero."<p> Wolfe's roots in New Journalism were intertwined with the nonfiction  novel that Truman Capote had pioneered with <I>In Cold Blood</I>. As  Capote did?? Wolfe tells his story from a limited omniscient perspective??  dropping into the lives of his "aracters" as each in turn becomes a major  player in the space program. After an opening chapter on the terror of being a test pilot's wife?? the story cuts back to the late 1940s?? when  Americans were first attempting to break the sound barrier. Test pilots?? we  discover?? are people who live fast lives with dangerous machines?? not all of them airborne. Chuck Yeager was certainly among the fastest?? and his determination