The Right Stuff.

WOLFE, Tom. [Chuck Yeager; Walter M. Schirra; Donald K. Slayton; Alan B. Shepard; John H. Glenn; M. Scott Carpenter; Leroy G. Cooper Jr.].

Item Number: 138022

New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979.

First edition of Wolfe’s classic work. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by the Mercury Seven (minus Gus Grissom who passed away by the time of publication). Signed by Walter M. Schirra Jr., Donald K. Slayton, Alan B. Shepard Jr., John Glenn Jr., M. Scott Carpenter and Leroy G. Cooper Jr. on the half-title page. Additionally signed by Chuck Yeager and Tom Wolfe on the title page. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Neil Fujita. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Most likely a unique example with this collection of signatures.

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." "One of the most romantic and thrilling books ever written about men who put themselves in peril." (The Boston Globe). Listed by Modern Library as one of the top 100 nonfiction works of the twentieth century.