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The Right Stuff (Paperback, New ed)
Loot Price: R204
Discovery Miles 2 040
You Save: R143
(41%)
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The Right Stuff (Paperback, New ed)
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List price R347
Loot Price R204
Discovery Miles 2 040
You Save R143 (41%)
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Tom Wolfe began The Right Stuff 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. The Right Stuff, he explains, became 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. 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 to push through
Mach 1 - a feat that some had predicted would cause the destruction
of any aircraft--makes him the book's guiding spirit. Shepard's
suborbital flight and Gus Grissom's embarrassing panic on the high
seas (making the controversial claim that Grissom flooded his
Liberty capsule by blowing the escape hatch too soon). The author
also produces an admiring portrait of John Glenn's apple-pie
heroism and selfless dedication. By the time Wolfe concludes with a
return to Yeager and his late-career exploits, the narrative's epic
proportions and literary merits are secure. Certainly The Right
Stuff is the best, the funniest, and the most vivid book ever
written about America's manned space program.
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