The Right Stuff is an exhilarating flight into the death-defying lives of the Mercury Seven, America’s first astronauts.

‘What is it that makes a man willing to sit up on top of an enormous Roman candle, and wait for someone to light the fuse?’ In The Right Stuff, hailed as one of the greatest books ever written about space flight, Tom Wolfe sets out to answer the question, and lays bare the mindset and motivations of the first American astronauts to risk life and limb to beat the Soviets into orbit. He blows apart the mythology of the Mercury Seven – Deke Slayton, Gus Grissom, Alan Shepard, Wally Schirra, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter and Gordon Cooper – and the forerunner of them all, supersonic test pilot Chuck Yeager. Dazzlingly written, this is a thrilling account of men who ‘pushed the edge of the envelope’ at work and play, all to prove they possessed the quality that Wolfe famously christened the right stuff.