Tom Wolfe has never applied the techniques of fiction to nonfiction more carefully, more elaborately or more successfully than in The Right Stuff, his study of the American astronauts. Whether he is empathising with the fraught wife of a test-pilot, given reason to believe that her husband has just been killed, or chronicling the resentful emotions of war-heroes treated by scientists like laboratory specimens, Wolfe produces a compelling authenticity. Much of the narrative is exciting, and some of it is surprisingly moving. From his de-mythification of contemporary fashion, Wolfe has proceeded to what's among other things, a revealing study of contemporary myth-making. Publicity was integral to the space programme, and, simply by choosing the right stories to tell and then telling them simply, he shows how men shaped for different careers partly accepted and partly rejected the images that government officials thought suitable for them. (p. 29)

Ronald Hayman...