When I saw the trailer for The Right Stuff in a movie theater, I knew what my plans were for opening night—and, oh did that movie deliver! A World War II ace tasked to pilot the Bell X-1—that orange, bullet-shaped, rocket-powered beast—dropped from the belly of a B-29. He risked it all to break the sound barrier in a silent, top-secret black hole. Chuck Yeager then went on to break the world altitude record in a NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) gussied-up, rocket-boosted NF-104, only to drop 100,000 feet in a flat spin, ejecting moments before impact. You couldn’t manufacture a better hero if you tried.
Yet beyond the man, myth, and legend, lies one of the most clever distillers of human behavior as demonstrated in the collection of quotes in his new book, 101 Chuck Yeager-isms. The book converts his razor’s edge experiences as a combat and test pilot into analogies that can be applied to both pilots and civilians alike. Apparently, while Chuck Yeager was not only ahead of his time based on his aviation feats, he was a meme-generating machine for more than half a century, just waiting for this moment to be cool. His quotes are custom-tailored to today’s world: Nugget sized sound bites that don’t tax your attention, yet go a long way, packing enough pop to be the sonic boom on top of this literary ice cream sundae.
