I read this book simply because I figured it might mention space monkeys. It does. They’re a couple chapters on space monkeys so I was quite satisfied with that. More than the mention of space monkeys, this book is a wondrous journey into the world of fighter pilots. It has often been hailed as Wolfe’s most patriotic book but I have to say, I didn’t see it. Not as patriotism anyway. As he suggests, what drives pilots is more of a spirit of competition or fraternity… and less for love of nation. The seven astronauts he talks about are national heroes, but Wolfe conveys a sense of dimension to their lives and interests and desires. It is cheeky and touching. Wolfe is fascinated – and gets the reader fascinated – by the lure of what must be called the banality of peril. As he documents in THE RIGHT STUFF, one out of ever four pilots will be killed in training exercises over the course of a twenty year stint, making it one of the most dangerous jobs that a human being can have. The number of ways you can be killed in a fighter jet is almost unimaginable. You flight fast and push the envelope and then you land on a greased skillet in the middle of an ocean. At night. And then you do it again, and again. And again. What really caught my attention was Wolfe’s observation that when the American astronauts finally made it into space their personal reactions were so muted that it barely registered, not like it registered for members of the public. All spontaneity and awe are trained out of the pilots. It has to be. When something goes wrong: tried A, tried B, tried C. What next? This is the appropriate response, and if you don’t have this response to whatever you encounter you simply don’t have the right stuff. It is really an odyssey and Wolfe’s captures the story brilliantly. It is a toned down Wolfe, but his trademarks are all there. I would go so far as to say that it is on par with The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Wolfe once again documents remarkable lives. .................... "God," he says . . . you look awful!" The Good Samaritan, A.A.D.! Also a doctor! And he just gave his diagnosis! That's all a man needs . . . to be forty years and to fall to the ground one hundred thousand feet in a flat spin and punch out and make a million-dollar hole in the ground and get half his head and his hand burned up and have his eye practically ripped out of his skull . . . and have the Good Samaritan, A.A.D., arrive as if sent by the spirit of Pancho Barnes herself to render a midnight verdict among the motherless Joshua trees while the screen doors bang and the pictures of a hundred dead pilots rattle in their frames: "My God! . . . you look awful." (347) For an abbreviated version of this book, see "The Truest Sport: Jousting with Sam and Charlie" in Tom Wolfe, Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine.