Hypersonic: The Story of the North American X-15 (Revised Edition) (Specialty Press) Paperback – July 23, 2008

Short of doing your own primary research, I don't see how you could find more complete information on the X-15 project than this book. The bonus is, the book is well written, clearly organized in a logical fashion, and has all the indicators of a labor of love on the part of the authors.I find myself constantly re-reading sections; the audacity (and talent!) of the people involved is breathtaking; the authors capture that. If, for example, you're fascinated with the development of the SR-71, and reading about the ingenuity exhibited by those folks in problem solving, this is a book for you.Never reckless, but never timid, these folks pushed through challenges that would scare the current NASA mob witless. In a weird way, the Soviet challenge may have set back manned space flight decades; we junked far more promising projects to win a race we were never going to loose anyway - the logical follow-ons to the X-15 were ignored in favor of quick-fix solutions. But no whining here! The X-15 stands on it's own merits as a thunderous success. Read this book!

Not to take from old Chuck's efforts, but I've always thought the X-15 was the more interesting program. It's amazing the level of accomplishments they made, yet the X-15 is far from being as well known to the public as some other programs in aviation. If you like the X-15, this is definitely the book. It's not the kind of book you just fly through and look at the photos, then throw on a shelf... It is definitely worth your while to take the time and really read through the details of how the aircraft worked, what the Pilots went through, and how the milestones were achieved technically. The flight log in the back is amazing in it's detail, evening listing the chase aircraft and chase Pilots involved in each mission. I purchased it along with the X-15 Scrapbook, and they work well together.

This book is packed with detail, from detail diagrams of parts of the aircraft, to how the missions were launched as well as plenty of informative photographs. It also provides a comprehensive history of the aircraft and well as biographies of the key individuals involved. Normally this would be all that you would need in an item such as this, but this book goers further; the writers have managed to present would could have had the potential to be really boring material on the history of the aircraft into a fantastically engaging narrative. It's really well put together and I don't think I have ever read an aviation book that is so well done. Highly recommended.

This must be one of the most in-depth books I have ever read about any airplane. Very well researched and documented, you will find a lot of information about almost every imaginable aspect of the aircraft. The numerous pictures (with their respective captions) are very descriptive and illustrative, in particular the excellent color ones.Well, if this is all so great, why did I rate it 'only' 4-stars? Most readers who take the time to write a review either do it because they really liked that particular book (in which case 5-star ratings are the norm), or they found something particular they disliked (in which case 3-star or less ratings are the norm). Personally, 5-stars should be reserved to books in which I can only find very little or nothing to crtitize, which unfortunately is not the case with Hypersonic.First comes the format: This book should have been printed in a different format (page size). As it is, there is so much information 'cramped' into one page, that it becomes almost a pain to really read through all of it. Additionally, the font size is so small (in order to pack the pages full), that you better have good eyesight and lots of light - not an ideal read before sleeping! The number of pages in this book does not reflect the content, it should be rather 500+ pages with 'normal' content per page.Then, I found it very anoying for such an otherwise so well done book to find that many typing and editing errors, this is really not a good editing job.Finally, I think the book deserved more 'cockpit' piloting stories that tell you what it felt to be mounted on top of such a powerfull rocket engine and for a few minutes be an astronaut, maybe even some more amusing annecdotes that must have happened throughout the 10+ years of flying. Even such an interesting subject as the X-15 can become a rather dry and technical read, and unfortunately this does happen in this book.Overall, this is an authoritative history of the X-15 program, focused on the enginerring and technical challenges that needed to be overcomed before putiing a man on a rocket plane and fly at Mach 6.7 and 350.000 feet - recommended.