Postures of glory came naturally to the first seven men to be chosen from the combative and competitive brotherhood of military test pilots, men constantly struggling to keep their places or climb the pyramid of achievement (Wolfe calls it a ziggurat but no matter), to display the proper qualities of classy and conspicuous bravery—the "right stuff" of the title.

In his opening chapter—the best thing in [The Right Stuff]—Wolfe describes with passion and an appalling vividness what it is like to live with the accident statistics: the pressure of a by no means atypical run of bad luck, in which comrade after comrade is macerated, incinerated, crunched. But the pilots' fears are of failure, not death: "anything—even the great Kaboom!—was better than hearing bingo over your earphones". They are all those un-British things like raunchy and feisty and gung-ho: on the ground, the...