U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, is on the cover of Esquire magazine's December issue .
Kelly, 47, is one of the magazine's 20 "Americans of the Year," and an article and photo spread inside the magazine accompany the cover.
"Many large strains of current American history are contained in the compressed history" of Kelly's year, the magazine article says of the retired astronaut.
Esquire writer Chris Jones writes that as a military pilot who flew in Operation Desert Storm and as an astronaut and space shuttle commander, Kelly was, in many ways, "perfectly prepared for his year, and for the hard years no doubt to come. Even his biggest plans have changed.
"But in a strange way, he had trained his whole life for this. He had been taught to reach for perfection, but he had also learned how to adjust in the face of system failures, of faulty electrical circuits and of bullets."
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To see the Esquire article and photos: http://www.esquire.com/features/americans-2011/mark-kelly-1211
Contact reporter Stephanie Innes at sinnes@azstarnet.com or 573-4134.
