The Right Stuff

Tom Wolfe's account of the test pilots and Mercury astronauts who became the first Americans in space. It's the story of a particular kind of courage — the calm, unspoken readiness to push a machine to its edge — and the culture that produced it.

For founders, The Right Stuff is a meditation on risk and the temperament it takes to take it. Peter Thiel calls it both a great history of the space race and a study of how to steel yourself for risk; Branson listed it among his lifetime favorites — the psychology of doing things others won't, without flinching.