Although it's been many years since I read this, I remember lending it to several of my friends in college, and they loved it so much that I eventually never got it back.
This book was, of course, the basis for the popular cheesy '70s show "The Six Million Dollar Man". But this book is anything but cheesy. Steve Austin is an astronaut/pilot involved in the very real, very dangerous and exciting NASA "lifting body" program of the late '60s and early '70s, a program devoted to finding an acceptable design for the Space Shuttle. Martin Caidin, the author of this book, was a doctor who actually participated in this program, and he was actually at Rogers Dry Lake bed when Bruce Peterson plowed his M2-F2 into the turf in a terrible accident--the very same wreck that we saw at the beginning of every "Six Million Dollar Man" episode.
Steve Austin, who similarly crashes and is seriously injured, gets "enhanced" artificial limbs and an eye (although the eye really only functions as a camera; when this book was written, an actual "seeing" eye was WAY too farfetched), and he is enlisted by the government to perform special missions, including stealing a Russian MIG from a base in the Middle East.
Austin's problems with his new "freakish" nature and with his being used as a pawn of the government are quite realistically portrayed. Caidin delves much farther into the psychology of a "bionic" (which is actually a misnomer) man than the TV series ever did.
A very fun, fascinating, exciting read, if you can find it. One of my favorite books of all time.
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