Bücher von Tom Wolfe

Sherman McCoy is a WASP, bond trader and self-appointed 'Master of the Universe'. He has a fashionable wife, a Park Avenue apartment and a Southern mistress. His spectacular fall begins the moment he is involved in an accident in the Bronx. Prosecutors, newspaper hacks, politicians and clergy close in on him, determined to bring him down.

The setting is Atlanta, Georgia — a racially mixed, late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth and wily politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta conglomerate king whose outsize ego has at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 29,000 acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife, and a half-empty office complex with a staggering load of debt.Meanwhile, Conrad Hensley, idealistic young father of two, is laid off from his job at the Croker Global Foods warehouse near Oakland and finds himself spiraling into the lower depths of the American legal system.And back in Atlanta, when star Georgia Tech running back Fareek “the Canon” Fanon, a homegrown product of the city’s slums, is accused of date-raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment, upscale black lawyer Roger White II is asked to represent Fanon and help keep the city’s delicate racial balance from blowing sky-high.Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real estate syndicates — Wolfe shows us contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most admired novelist. Charlie Croker’s deliverance from his tribulations provides an unforgettable denouement to the most widely awaited, hilarious and telling novel America has seen in ages — Tom Wolfe’s most outstanding achievement to date.

A sprawling collection of essays about the subcultures of the 1960s by Tom Wolfe, the revolutionary journalist and novelistWhen Tom Wolfe smashed his way into the literary scene in 1965 with The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, he transformed reporting in American popular culture. For his second book, Wolfe traveled from La Jolla to London in search of new lifestyles. The Pump House Gang is the result: a collection of essays that chronicles life at the end of the 1960s, written with all the panache and perceptiveness that made Wolfe one of our greatest American journalists.Running throughout The Pump House Gang is a central theme of Wolfe's writing: status. He discusses the 1960s phenomenon of retreating from conventional social hierarchies, which Wolfe calls "starting your own league." Surfers, motorcyclists, lumpen-dandies, and stay-at-homes-everybody's doing it. Except for die-hards in the crumbling old social worlds of New York and London, where the confusion is so great that nobody can tell whether this is really the path to the top they've taken or just the service elevator.Dazzlingly brilliant as a stylist, daringly provocative as a commentator, and always entertaining, in The Pump House Gang, Wolfe is thoroughly, completely himself.

In den vergangenen 150 Jahren wurden von der Entdeckung des Penizillins über die Entschlüsselung der menschlichen DNS bis zum Nachweis des Higgs-Bosons kolossale Fortschritte gemacht. Doch an einer der drängendsten Fragen der Menschheitsgeschichte - Wo liegt der Ursprung der menschlichen Sprache? - scheitert die Wissenschaft bis heute. Das hat, wie Tom Wolfe genüsslich darlegt, führende Forscher von Charles Darwin bis Noam Chomsky jedoch zu keiner Zeit davon abgehalten, grandiose Erfolge zu verkünden, die gar keine waren, Konkurrenten zu diffamieren, anstatt eigene Fehler einzugestehen, und generell des Kaisers neue Kleider in den schillerndsten Farben zu beschreiben. In Das Königreich der Sprache vertritt Wolfe die These, wonach die Sprache die erste kulturelle Leistung des Menschen und somit nicht mit der Evolutiontheorie oder wissenschaftlicher Systematik zu erklären ist.

Der große New York-Roman der 90er JahreSherman McCoy, erfolgreicher Wall-Street-Broker mit Wohnsitz in der Park Avenue, findet sich plötzlich vor Gericht wieder: Unfallflucht. eigentlich eine Bagatelle, doch Staatsanwälte, Priester und Boulevardblätter verschwören sich gegen ihn. Schließlich grassieren über ihn so viele spannende Gerüchte, dass die Wahrheit niemanden mehr interessiert..."Ein pralles Sittengemälde." (Der Spiegel)

An excellent book by a genius," said Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., of this now classic exploration of the 1960s from the founder of new journalism."This is a book that will be a sharp pleasure to reread years from now, when it will bring back, like a falcon in the sky of memory, a whole world that is currently jetting and jazzing its way somewhere or other."--Newsweek

What is it, that makes a man willing to sit on top of an enormous Roman Candle and wait for someone to light the fuse? Ask a few of the astronauts and find out. They had it. The first Americans in space, battling the Russians for control of the heavens, putting their lives on the line. This book is about the quality beyond bravery, beyond courage.

Charles Croker, Atlanta real-estate entrepreneur, is having to face the reality of massive debt. Conrad Hensly, idealistic father of two, is fired from his job in the Croker Global Foods warehouse in Oakland. Back in Atlanta, Fareek "The Cannon" Fannon, star running-back, is accused of date rape.