We Seven — By the Astronauts Themselves

First printing, published by Simon and Schuster, New York, 1962; text copyrighted by Simon and Schuster, photographs by Time Inc. Opens with “Those Seven — An Introduction,” built around the famous 1959 press-conference photograph of all seven Mercury astronauts raising their hands (Schirra and Glenn raising both) when asked who was ready to fly into space immediately. Each astronaut narrates his own chapters in turn — selection and training in “Six to Fill the Team” and “We All Pull Together,” Shepard’s suborbital flight in “The First American,” Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7 mission and its hatch mishap in “The Trouble with Liberty Bell,” and the buildup to and conduct of Glenn’s orbital flight in “Three to Make Ready,” “The Mission,” and “The Confirmation.”