The Right Stuff
Tom Wolfe · 1979
Wolfe helped create New Journalism (the use of fictional techniques in nonfiction) and this account of the original Mercury astronauts is his masterwork. He captured both the courage and the absurdity of the space race with prose that moves like a rocket and never stops being fun to read.
The case against
Wolfe's pyrotechnics (the italics! the exclamation points! the incantatory repetitions!) run at full throttle for 400 pages, and either you ride it or you tire by chapter three. His treatment of Gus Grissom and the blown hatch hardened an unfair legend the engineering evidence later dissolved. The wives, Glenn's excepted, are wallpaper with hairdos.
Non-Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
