Non-Fiction Books
The author's first book, a unique collection of essays about 1960s lifestyles, peels the lid off the egalitarian subculture of the era. Reprint.
One of the most essential works on the 1960s counterculture, Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Test ushered in an era of New Journalism. This is the seminal work on the hippie culture, a report on what it was like to follow along with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as they launched the "Transcontinental Bus Tour" from the West Coast to New York, all while introducing acid (then legal) to hundreds of like-minded folks, staging impromptu jam sessions, dodging the Feds, and meeting some of the most revolutionary figures of the day. "An American classic" ( Newsweek ) that defined a generation. "An astonishing book" ( The New York Times Book Review ) and an unflinching portrait of Ken Kesey, his Merry Pranksters, LSD, and the psychedelic 1960s.
1980, mass market paperback reprint edition, Bantam, NY. 244 pages. B&W illustrations throughout. This is the famous writer's 2nd collection of essays. Wolfe paints portraits of 60's notables, young folks in particular, who cried out for status, understanding, and most of all, celebration. Here we have surfers and those individuals who were never concerned with the norm and instead insisted on doing it their way. This man was one of the real icons in the so-called New Journalism that dominated the 1960's onward.
The phrase radical chic was coined by Tom Wolfe in 1970 when Leonard Bernstein gave a party for the Black Panthers at his duplex apartment on Park Avenue. That incongrous scene is re-created here in high fidelity as is another meeting ground between militant minorities and the liberal white establishment.
Comments on the evolution of the New Journalism and presents representative writings by Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and others
The author derails the great American myth of modern art in a scathing, witty, uncompromising critique of American art from the 1950s through the 1970s. Reprint.
Tom Wolfe offers observations and speculations about American life, providing insight into trends in art; sex, crime, and salvation; New York City; and the attitudes of intellectuals
"Tom Wolfe at his very best" ( The New York Times Book Review ), The Right Stuff is t he basis for the 1983 Oscar Award-winning film of the same name and the 8-part Disney+ TV mini-series. From "America's nerviest journalist" ( Newsweek )--a breath-taking epic, a magnificent adventure story, and an investigation into the true heroism and courage of the first Americans to conquer space. " 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.
Tom Wolfe, "America's most skillful satirist" (The Atlantic Monthly), examines the strange saga of American architecture in this sequel to The Painted Word.
Gathers selections from Wolfe's previous essay collections about American culture, the Vietnam War, art and architecture, and the space program
The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong. Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech -- not evolution -- is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements. From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman who beat Darwin to the theory of natural selection but later renounced it, and through the controversial work of modern-day anthropologist Daniel Everett, who defies the current wisdom that language is hard-wired in humans, Wolfe examines the solemn, long-faced, laugh-out-loud zig-zags of Darwinism, old and Neo, and finds it irrelevant here in the Kingdom of Speech.