- Year
- 1979
- By
- Wolfe, Tom
- Published
- New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Edition
- English. First edition, first printing, hardcover, dust jacket.
- Ciancone
- N/A.
- Shelf
- R2
- Catalog
- Catalog E · Miscellanea
Wolfe’s account of the Mercury Seven astronauts and the test-pilot culture of Edwards Air Force Base that produced them, tracing the space race from Chuck Yeager’s early supersonic flights through Gordon Cooper’s 1963 Mercury-Atlas 9 mission and setting the pilots’ own ethos against NASA’s public-relations machine. Grew out of a four-part series on the astronauts Wolfe wrote for Rolling Stone in 1973. Won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and the American Book Award; adapted as the 1983 film of the same name.