Born in 1931 in Richmond Virginia, Tom Wolfe had dreams of playing baseball professionally. While he came closer than most with the same aspiration, he had to settle for writing. He earned an education at Washington and Lee, and attended graduate school at Yale University. His doctoral thesis studied Communist Organizational Activity among American Writers, 1929-1942. Wolfe took his first newspaper job in 1956 and soon worked for the Washington Post, and the New York Herald Tribune. While there he experimented with fictional techniques in feature stories. He is credited with being the inventor of New Journalism. That is, he wrote feature articles ignoring all conventional journalistic rules, instead, simply writing the story the way he wanted. He used italics, free association literary techniques, even exclamation points! His career advanced further in the mid-60’s with the publication of The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. In 1979, he published The Right Stuff, which won his the American Book Award for Non Fiction, and in the eights became a household name with the Bonfire of the Vanities. He was paid extremely well for the rights to the movie. He continues to write novels, among his most recent novels, the highly successful, A Man in Full, and his latest work release, I am Charlotte Simmons. Tom Wolfe lives in New York City. For more books by and about Tom Wolfe
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