Authors > Tom Wolfe

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

To most, Ken Kesey is best known as the author of the celebrated novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But for Tom Wolfe, Ken was the leader of the Merry Pranksters, a band of counter-culture bohemians who traveled cross-country in a far-out, brightly painted school bus they dubbed Furthur.

Year: 1968
Genre: 1960s, Non-fiction

The Right Stuff

Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers, that made The Right Stuff a classic.

Year: 1979
Genre: 1950s, 1960s, Historical, Non-fiction

The Bonfire of the Vanities

This bitingly hilarious American satire will forever define late-twentieth-century New York style. Tom Wolfe's bestselling modern classic tells the story of Sherman McCoy, an elite Wall Street bond trader who has it all: wealth, power, prestige, a Park Avenue apartment, a beautiful wife, and an even more beautiful mistress, until one wrong turn sends Sherman spiraling downward in a humiliating fall from grace.

Year: 1987
Genre: 1980s, Legal Thriller, Satire

See Also:
• John Steinbeck
• Charles Dickens
• Truman Capote
• Norman Mailer