Why Chuck Yeager was cooler than we’ll ever be

Cool is eternal. Hot is what’s fashionable and fleeting. And there was perhaps no American icon more quintessentially cool than Chuck Yeager: cool under fire, cool when breaking the sound barrier, cool when crashing his experimental X-1A jet and walking away from the wreckage.

Cool is eternal. Hot is what’s fashionable and fleeting. And there was perhaps no American icon more quintessentially cool than Chuck Yeager: cool under fire, cool when breaking the sound barrier, cool when crashing his experimental X-1A jet and walking away from the wreckage.