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SONIC WIND

Name: SONIC WIND
Author: Craig Ryan
ISBN: 978-0-87140-677-4

THE STORY OF JOHN PAUL STAPP AND HOW A RENEGADE DOCTOR BECAME THE FASTEST MAN ON EARTH

by Craig Ryan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 17, 2015

A consistently fine appreciation of the medical maverick who, as much as any other, helped make the Space Age possible.

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An author specializing in aviation tells the remarkable, almost-forgotten story of an aerospace pioneer.

In September 1955, the cover of Time featured a portrait of the Air Force medical officer “Space Surgeon Stapp.” That same year, John Paul Stapp (1910-1999) was the subject of TV’s popular This Is Your Life and a Hollywood movie. His suddenly high profile stemmed from a land speed record set aboard a rocket sled that made him the “Fastest Man on Earth.” This glamorous moniker, though, came really as a byproduct of Stapp’s principal work, a lifetime study of massive acceleration and deceleration forces and the limits of human tolerance on land and in the air, experiments in which he frequently used himself as the guinea pig. Responsible for radical new designs of cockpits, ejection seats, crash helmets, parachutes, seat belts, shoulder harnesses, and flight suits, Stapp rewrote textbooks and obliterated the previously accepted limits of human endurance. He also developed pre-breathing procedures for stratospheric flights, vetted the Mercury astronauts for NASA, and conducted important car-crash research years before anyone ever heard of Ralph Nader. Ryan (Magnificent Failure: Free Fall from the Edge of Space, 2003, etc.) delights in Stapp’s various obsessions, effortlessly explains the aeromedical research, and vividly sets scenes, whether of Stapp’s boyhood in Brazil or of his research project in the New Mexico desert, where an unusual gang of scientists and engineers (including a troop of chimpanzees used, not without controversy, in tests) gathered to set the speed record. Indefatigable, Stapp inspired deep loyalty and admiration from those who worked with and for him, despite his unconventional persona. Ryan’s full-length biography uncovers the private man, Stapp’s offbeat sense of humor, his awkward love life, his passion for classical music, and his friendships with daring test pilots Chuck Yeager and Joe Kittinger, fellow trailblazers whose fame has persisted.

A consistently fine appreciation of the medical maverick who, as much as any other, helped make the Space Age possible.

Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-87140-677-4

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Liveright/Norton

Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.