Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Bonfire of the Vanities | 1987 |
| A Man in Full | 1998 |
| I Am Charlotte Simmons | 2004 |
| Back to Blood | 2012 |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
| Ambush at Fort Bragg | 1996 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby | 1965 |
| The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test | 1968 |
| The Pump House Gang | 1968 |
| Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers | 1970 |
| The New Journalism (With: E. W. Johnson) | 1973 |
| The Painted Word | 1975 |
| Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine | 1976 |
| The Right Stuff | 1979 |
| In Our Time | 1980 |
| From Bauhaus to Our House | 1981 |
| Hooking Up | 2000 |
| The Kingdom of Speech | 2016 |
About Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe (1930 to 2018) was an American journalist and novelist associated with New Journalism, the style of reporting developed in the 1960s and 1970s that borrowed the techniques of fiction. He is known for the non-fiction books “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and “The Right Stuff” and for his first novel, “The Bonfire of the Vanities”.
Born Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. in Richmond, Virginia, on 2 March 1930, he graduated from Washington and Lee University in 1951 and went on to a doctorate in American studies at Yale. He became a reporter on the Springfield Union in Massachusetts in 1956, moved to The Washington Post in 1959 and joined the New York Herald Tribune as a feature writer in 1962.
A 1963 Esquire article on the custom car culture of southern California gave its title to his first book, “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby” (1965), a collection of his newspaper and magazine pieces. “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” (1968) is an account of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and “Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers” (1970) includes his report on a party given by Leonard Bernstein to raise money for the Black Panther Party. “The Right Stuff” (1979), about the pilots who became the Mercury Seven astronauts, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1980 and was filmed in 1983.
Wolfe then turned to fiction. “The Bonfire of the Vanities” first appeared as a serial in Rolling Stone between July 1984 and August 1985 and was heavily revised before book publication in 1987, with its protagonist Sherman McCoy recast as a New York bond salesman. Brian De Palma directed the film version. “A Man in Full” (1998) took more than 11 years to write, was a National Book Award finalist and spent ten weeks at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. “I Am Charlotte Simmons” (2004) follows a scholarship student at an elite university, and “Back to Blood” (2012) is set in Miami.
His last book was “The Kingdom of Speech” (2016), a critique of the work of Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky on language. Wolfe received the National Humanities Medal in 2001 and the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2010. He wore a white suit as a trademark from 1962 onwards. He died in Manhattan on 14 May 2018, aged 88.