First Edition Of Tom Wolfe ' S The Right Stuff 1979 DJ HC VG, /F Astronauts F. S. G.
Item History & Price
| Reference Number: Avaluer:7104885 |
Here is a First Edition of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. This book is a first printing from 1979 published by FSC. Dust jacket VGood + some light edgewear one 1/2 inch tear. Book is in Fine Condition. Please look at all the pictures and you be the judge.Wolfe, Tom. THE RIGHT STUFF. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979. 1st edition. With “First printing, 1979” printed on the copyright page, which indicates that this is the correct 1st edition, 1st printing. This is NOT a ...book-club book. This is NOT an ex-library book.
Buyer beware: there were later printings of THE RIGHT STUFF that were published in this exact hardcover format. This is the real deal: the true 1st edition.
Tom Wolfe was born in 1930 in Richmond, Virginia and he died in 2018 in Manhattan. He grew up in Gloucester Road in the Richmond North Side neighborhood of Sherwood Park. He attended St. Christopher’s School, an Episcopal all-boys school where he was the student council president, the editor of the school newspaper, and was a star baseball player. He turned down admission to Princeton University to attend Washington and Lee University. He majored in English, was the sports editor of the college newspaper, and helped found a literary magazine, Shenandoah. He graduated cum laude in 1951. While still in college, Wolfe continued to play baseball as a pitcher and began to play semi-professionally. In 1952 he earned a tryout with the New York Giants but was cut after three days, which he blamed on his inability to throw good fastballs. He then enrolled in Yale University’s American Studies doctoral program. He received his Ph.D. in 1957. He opted to work in journalism as opposed to taking teaching jobs in academia. He worked for The Washington Post and won several journalism awards. His first book (and one of his most famous) THE KANDY-KOLORED TANGERINE-FLAKE STREAMLINE BABY, a collection of his writings was widely read. Wolfe championed what he called “saturation reporting, ” a reportorial approach in which the journalist shadows and observes the subject over an extended period of time. Wolfe’s famous book THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST is considered a striking example of New Journalism, and was an account of the famous sixties counter-culture group of Ken Kesey and Kesey’s followers. He also published the book RADICAL CHIC & MAU-MAUING THE FLAK CATCHERS which was a biting account of a party given by famous composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein to raise money for the Black Panther Party. In 1957 Wolfe published THE RIGHT STUFF (offered here), an account of the early Mercury astronauts that was also made into a famous Hollywood film. Wolfe published in first novel, the famous THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, in 1987. Tom Wolfe was the author of such great and famous books as THE KANDY-KOLORED TANGERINE-FLAKE STREAMLINE BABY, THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST, THE PUMP HOUSE GANG, RADICAL CHIC & MAU-MAUING THE FLAK CATCHERS, THE PAINTED WORD, THE RIGHT STUFF (offered here), IN OUR TIME, THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, A MAN IN FULL, BACK TO BLOOD, and a number of other books, as well as hundreds of articles and essays.
From the dust jacket flap: “ . . . ‘As to just what this ineffable quality was . . . well, it obviously involved bravery. But it was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life. The idea seemed to be that any fool could do that, if that was all that was required, just as any fool could throw away his life in the process . . . ‘ . . . Men first flew into space in 1961, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of that adventure: namely, the perceptions and goals of the astronauts themselves, aloft and during certain remarkable odysseys on earth . . . It is this, the inner world of the early astronauts, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and their confreres, that Tom Wolfe describes with his extraordinary powers of empathy. He shows us the hidden olympus to which all ambitious combat and test pilots aspired, the top of the pyramid of the right stuff. And we learn the nature of the ineffable pilot’s grace without which all else meant nothing . . . We see the men whose achievements dominated the flying fraternity in the late 1950’s as the space age began, men like Chuck Yeager and Joe Walker, pilots of the first rocket planes, most notably the X-1 and the X-15. The selection of the Mercury astronauts in 1959 shook up the fraternity as thoroughly as had Yeager’s breaking of the sound barrier twelve years before. Public excitement and concern over the space race with the Soviets immediately elevated the seven astronauts to the uneasy eminence of heroes, long before their first flight . . . At the time, the press depicted them as Flying Saints buttressed Doris Day wives, or else as robots dialed up and down by NASA engineers. After months with astronauts and their families and others in and around the space program in Houston, Cape Kennedy, and elsewhere, Wolfe found the truth to be profoundly different from either stereotype. Through his account we become privy to moments of cosmic dimension and low comedy, as well as deep emotion, that Mission Control never knew about. We are with the astronauts and their wives during the flights and dangers of both rocket flights into space and the fame and celebrity no one had trained them for . . . Nor was the public glory ever sufficient in itself. We see the seven men, in the very moment of their idolization by the outside world, struggling to gain the respect of their peers within the flying fraternity, even to the point of altering NASA’s original conception of the astronaut’s role -- in keeping with the unspoken prerequisites of the right stuff . . . Because Wolfe presents the astronauts at every turn as full-blooded human beings, he gives their triumphs a dimension that raises them above the technological. In the process the adventure itself -- man’s attempt to explore his galaxy -- comes alive for the first time . . . “
From the rear flap of the dust jacket: “ . . . TOM WOLFE grew up in Richmond, Virginia, received a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University, and now lives in New York City. THE RIGHT STUFF is Wolfe’s eighth’s book and it illustrates once again, in the words of Karl Shapiro, that ‘Tom Wolfe is more than brilliant . . . He is more than urbane, suave, trenchant . . . Tom Wolfe is a goddam joy . . . Also, not to insult him, he writes like a master.’ . . . “
Please checkout photos of Books for Condition details.
Book Charge of shipping and handling will be $4.50 within the U.S. Advise if you would like priority mail quote. International bidders must contact ebay for exact shipping cost. We accept Paypal. Insurance extra , seller gilt lettering is not responsible for uninsured items. Will combine shipping costs. By bidding you will agree to send payment for a winning bid within three days of auction going down. Will send within 3 days payment
Buyer beware: there were later printings of THE RIGHT STUFF that were published in this exact hardcover format. This is the real deal: the true 1st edition.
Tom Wolfe was born in 1930 in Richmond, Virginia and he died in 2018 in Manhattan. He grew up in Gloucester Road in the Richmond North Side neighborhood of Sherwood Park. He attended St. Christopher’s School, an Episcopal all-boys school where he was the student council president, the editor of the school newspaper, and was a star baseball player. He turned down admission to Princeton University to attend Washington and Lee University. He majored in English, was the sports editor of the college newspaper, and helped found a literary magazine, Shenandoah. He graduated cum laude in 1951. While still in college, Wolfe continued to play baseball as a pitcher and began to play semi-professionally. In 1952 he earned a tryout with the New York Giants but was cut after three days, which he blamed on his inability to throw good fastballs. He then enrolled in Yale University’s American Studies doctoral program. He received his Ph.D. in 1957. He opted to work in journalism as opposed to taking teaching jobs in academia. He worked for The Washington Post and won several journalism awards. His first book (and one of his most famous) THE KANDY-KOLORED TANGERINE-FLAKE STREAMLINE BABY, a collection of his writings was widely read. Wolfe championed what he called “saturation reporting, ” a reportorial approach in which the journalist shadows and observes the subject over an extended period of time. Wolfe’s famous book THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST is considered a striking example of New Journalism, and was an account of the famous sixties counter-culture group of Ken Kesey and Kesey’s followers. He also published the book RADICAL CHIC & MAU-MAUING THE FLAK CATCHERS which was a biting account of a party given by famous composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein to raise money for the Black Panther Party. In 1957 Wolfe published THE RIGHT STUFF (offered here), an account of the early Mercury astronauts that was also made into a famous Hollywood film. Wolfe published in first novel, the famous THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, in 1987. Tom Wolfe was the author of such great and famous books as THE KANDY-KOLORED TANGERINE-FLAKE STREAMLINE BABY, THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST, THE PUMP HOUSE GANG, RADICAL CHIC & MAU-MAUING THE FLAK CATCHERS, THE PAINTED WORD, THE RIGHT STUFF (offered here), IN OUR TIME, THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, A MAN IN FULL, BACK TO BLOOD, and a number of other books, as well as hundreds of articles and essays.
From the dust jacket flap: “ . . . ‘As to just what this ineffable quality was . . . well, it obviously involved bravery. But it was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life. The idea seemed to be that any fool could do that, if that was all that was required, just as any fool could throw away his life in the process . . . ‘ . . . Men first flew into space in 1961, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of that adventure: namely, the perceptions and goals of the astronauts themselves, aloft and during certain remarkable odysseys on earth . . . It is this, the inner world of the early astronauts, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and their confreres, that Tom Wolfe describes with his extraordinary powers of empathy. He shows us the hidden olympus to which all ambitious combat and test pilots aspired, the top of the pyramid of the right stuff. And we learn the nature of the ineffable pilot’s grace without which all else meant nothing . . . We see the men whose achievements dominated the flying fraternity in the late 1950’s as the space age began, men like Chuck Yeager and Joe Walker, pilots of the first rocket planes, most notably the X-1 and the X-15. The selection of the Mercury astronauts in 1959 shook up the fraternity as thoroughly as had Yeager’s breaking of the sound barrier twelve years before. Public excitement and concern over the space race with the Soviets immediately elevated the seven astronauts to the uneasy eminence of heroes, long before their first flight . . . At the time, the press depicted them as Flying Saints buttressed Doris Day wives, or else as robots dialed up and down by NASA engineers. After months with astronauts and their families and others in and around the space program in Houston, Cape Kennedy, and elsewhere, Wolfe found the truth to be profoundly different from either stereotype. Through his account we become privy to moments of cosmic dimension and low comedy, as well as deep emotion, that Mission Control never knew about. We are with the astronauts and their wives during the flights and dangers of both rocket flights into space and the fame and celebrity no one had trained them for . . . Nor was the public glory ever sufficient in itself. We see the seven men, in the very moment of their idolization by the outside world, struggling to gain the respect of their peers within the flying fraternity, even to the point of altering NASA’s original conception of the astronaut’s role -- in keeping with the unspoken prerequisites of the right stuff . . . Because Wolfe presents the astronauts at every turn as full-blooded human beings, he gives their triumphs a dimension that raises them above the technological. In the process the adventure itself -- man’s attempt to explore his galaxy -- comes alive for the first time . . . “
From the rear flap of the dust jacket: “ . . . TOM WOLFE grew up in Richmond, Virginia, received a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University, and now lives in New York City. THE RIGHT STUFF is Wolfe’s eighth’s book and it illustrates once again, in the words of Karl Shapiro, that ‘Tom Wolfe is more than brilliant . . . He is more than urbane, suave, trenchant . . . Tom Wolfe is a goddam joy . . . Also, not to insult him, he writes like a master.’ . . . “
Please checkout photos of Books for Condition details.
Book Charge of shipping and handling will be $4.50 within the U.S. Advise if you would like priority mail quote. International bidders must contact ebay for exact shipping cost. We accept Paypal. Insurance extra , seller gilt lettering is not responsible for uninsured items. Will combine shipping costs. By bidding you will agree to send payment for a winning bid within three days of auction going down. Will send within 3 days payment
