New Releases by Tom Wolfe

A sprawling collection of essays about the subcultures of the 1960s by Tom Wolfe, the revolutionary journalist and novelist When Tom Wolfe smashed his way onto the literary scene in 1965 with The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, he transformed reporting in American popular culture. For his next project, Wolfe traveled from La Jolla to London in search of new lifestyles. The result is The Pump House Gang (published simultaneously with The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in 1968): 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. In pieces about Hugh Hefner, Natalie Wood, and a gang of affluent teenage surfers, among others, Wolfe discusses the 1960s phenomenon of retreating from conventional social hierarchies, which he calls “starting your own league.” Dancers, 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.

En moderne amerikansk klassiker og den ultimative New Yorker- roman Forfængelighedens bål er en skånselsløs satire over den amerikanske skinverden, som medierne og magthaverne i fællesskab har skabt. Baggrunden er New York i 1980''erne, og hovedpersonen er en ung børsmægler, der tilfældigt bliver offer for systemet. Tom Wolfe ( 1931-2018) var amerikansk journalist og forfatter med et stort forfatterskab bag sig. Med sin stil, der lånte fra både litteratur og livsstilsjournalistik, var han med til at introducere skrivegenren new journalism.

Tom Wolfe, feroz y sagaz polemista, arremete contra las verdades absolutas del evolucionismo aplicado a la lingüística en su testamento literario. Además de un gran periodista y narrador, Tom Wolfe fue siempre un polemista fervoroso, vibrante e implacable, tal como demostró en sus diatribas contra ciertos mitos intocables del arte y la arquitectura modernos. Después de dieciséis años, el autor regresaba al ensayo con este El reino del lenguaje, que se ha convertido en su testamento literario: un texto donde clava su penetrante mirada y afilados colmillos nada menos que en la teoría de la evolución aplicada a la lingüística, cuestiona supuestas verdades absolutas y apunta contra un par de vacas sagradas separadas por un siglo. Por un lado Charles Darwin y por el otro Noam Chomsky en su faceta de lingüista, a cada uno de los cuales contrapone con su respectivo antagonista, despreciado o cuestionado por el mundo académico: el naturalista Alfred Russel Wallace, sobre cuyo destino Darwin siempre tuvo remordimientos y mala conciencia, y el antropólogo Daniel Everett, que ha pasado años conviviendo con la tribu amazónica de los pirahã y cuya teoría sobre el origen y evolución del lenguaje humano cuestiona la de Chomsky. En este libro agudo y retador, Wolfe se enfrenta a la ortodoxia y plantea estimulantes preguntas: ¿viene el lenguaje humano del canto de los pájaros? ¿Es un don innato o una herramienta adquirida? ¿Es el lenguaje lo que explica la evolución humana?

No princípio era o Verbo. Era mesmo? Antes de tornar-se um romancista campeão de vendagem, Tom Wolfe foi um jornalista desbravador. Agora, o magistral contador de histórias dirige sua atenção ao mistério por trás da criação de sua ferramenta mais importante: a linguagem. Em O reino da fala, Wolfe tenta alterar paradigmas com um polêmico argumento: o de que a fala, e não a evolução, é a responsável pelas complexas sociedades e conquistas da humanidade. Começando no século XIX com Alfred Wallace, o inglês autodidata que formulou antes de Charles Darwin a teoria da seleção natural, mas que depois renunciou a ela por sua incapacidade de explicar a fala humana, e chegando aos neodarwinistas, que durante anos argumentaram que existe um "órgão da linguagem" no cérebro humano, Wolfe examina os repetidos esforços e fracassos da ciência na tentativa de explicar o dom da fala. Na atualidade, Wolfe aborda a obra controversa de outro outsider, o linguista Daniel Everett. Após estudar por trinta anos a tribo pirahã no interior da Amazônia, Everett revelou um povo cujo nível pré-histórico de fala levara a uma sociedade sem religião, cerimônias, hierarquias, casamento ou ornamentos, e sem a capacidade de planejar o futuro ou considerar um passado, apenas o presente, desafiando, assim, a visão convencional de que a linguagem já vem programada nos seres humanos. Com espirituosidade mordaz e humor cáustico, Wolfe revela os zigue-zagues secretos, solenes, sérios e cômicos da história de como a evolução, de Charles Darwin a Noam Chomsky, é falha na explicação das origens da linguagem, além de mostrar a importância eterna dos outsiders corajosos na derrubada de nossas arraigadas ideias acerca de nós mesmos. Polêmico e vigoroso, este mais recente tour de force épico de Wolfe vai dar o que falar.

En svimlende beretning om vovehalsene i det amerikanske rumprojekts første, farlige år. Om testpiloterne og astronauterne, som efter nattens druk, hor og biljagter sætter sig bag raketflyets styrepind – og havarerer, eksploderer... eller sætter ny højderekord! Om piloternes koner, der skal leve med angsten. Om pressen, der svælger ligeligt over katastrofe og succes. Om det stof, der gør en pilot til en mand og en astronaut til en helt – kold marv. "Kold marv" blev filmatiseret i 1983 med titlen "The Right Stuff" (på dansk "Mænd af den rette støbning"). Filmen vandt fire Academy Awards og fortæller historien om de banebrydende Mercury astronauter Shepard, Grissom, Glen, Carpenter, Schirra, Cooper og Slayton, de første amerikanere, som, ti år efter at testpiloten Chuck Yaeger brød lydmuren, sætter nye højde- og fartrekorder i primitive rumfartøjer. "Tom Wolfe er toppen blandt USAs forfattere" - Kristeligt Dagblad Tom Wolfe (f. 1931) var en af pionererne inden for den såkaldte new journalism, men han er ikke mindre kendt for sine romaner, hvor han med eminent satire spidder den moralske hulhed bag den amerikanske pengekultur. På dansk er bl.a. udkommet "Kold marv", "På krogen" "En stor mand" og ikke mindst hans største succes, bestsellerromanen "Forfængelighedens bål", der har fået status som en moderne klassiker.

The legendary reporter and author of The Right Stuff takes on Darwin, Chomsky, and the origin of language in "his boldest bit of dueling yet" ( The New York Times). Tom Wolfe, the great journalist-provocateur, aims his piercing wit at the presiding theories of what makes us human. 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.

A big, panoramic story of the new America, as told by our master chronicler of the way we live now. As a police launch speeds across Miami''s Biscayne Bay -- with officer Nestor Camacho on board -- Tom Wolfe is off and running. Into the feverous landscape of the city, he introduces the Cuban mayor, the black police chief, a wanna-go-muckraking young journalist and his Yale-marinated editor; an Anglo sex-addiction psychiatrist and his Latina nurse by day, loin lock by night-until lately, the love of Nestor''s life; a refined, and oh-so-light-skinned young woman from Haiti and her Creole-spouting, black-gang-banger-stylin'' little brother; a billionaire porn addict, crack dealers in the ''hoods, "de-skilled" conceptual artists at the Miami Art Basel Fair, "spectators" at the annual Biscayne Bay regatta looking only for that night''s orgy, yenta-heavy ex-New Yorkers at an "Active Adult" condo, and a nest of shady Russians. Based on the same sort of detailed, on-scene, high-energy reporting that powered Tom Wolfe''s previous bestselling novels, Back to Blood is another brilliant, spot-on, scrupulous, and often hilarious reckoning with our times.

Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers is classic Tom Wolfe, a funny, irreverent, and "delicious" (The Wall Street Journal) dissection of class and status by the master of New Journalism 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 incongruous scene is re-created here in high fidelity as is another meeting ground between militant minorities and the liberal white establishment. Radical Chic provocatively explores the relationship between Black rage and White guilt. Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, set in San Francisco at the Office of Economic Opportunity, details the corruption and dysfunction of the anti-poverty programs run at that time. Wolfe uncovers how much of the program''s money failed to reach its intended recipients. Instead, hustlers gamed the system, causing the OEO efforts to fail the impoverished communities.

"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 In his first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965) Wolfe introduces us to the sixties, to extravagant new styles of life that had nothing to do with the "elite" culture of the past.

After critiquing―and infuriating―the art world with The Painted Word, the award-winning author Tom Wolfe shares his less-than-favorable thoughts about modern architecture in From Bauhaus to Our House. In this examination of the strange saga of twentieth-century architecture, Wolfe takes such European architects as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Bauhaus art school founder Walter Gropius to task for their glass-and-steel-box buildings that have influenced (and infected) America’s cities.

"America''s nerviest journalist" (Newsweek) trains his satirical eye on Modern Art in this "masterpiece" (The Washington Post) Wolfe''s style has never been more dazzling, his wit never more keen. He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. The Painted Word is Tom Wolfe "at his most clever, amusing, and irreverent" (San Francisco Chronicle).

Tom Wolfe at his very best" (The New York Times Book Review), The Right Stuff is the 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.

At Dupont University, an innocent college freshman named Charlotte Simmons learns that her intellect alone will not help her survive.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • “A masterpiece” (The Wall Street Journal) of a novel by the era-defining author of The Bonfire of the Vanities—now a Netflix original limited series from David E. Kelley (Big Little Lies) starring Jeff Daniels, Lucy Liu, and Diane Lane “Wolfe is a peerless observer, a fearless satirist, a genius in full.”—People The setting is Atlanta, Georgia—a racially mixed, late-twentieth-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, California, 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 turn-of-the-century America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him one of our most admired talked-about novelists.

In this novel, set in present-day Atlanta, Wolfe reveals the disparate worlds of contemporary America as he chronicles the story of an event that shatters the city''s delicate racial balance.

"Printed here in its entirety is Ambush at Fort Bragg, a novella about sting TV which has prefigured with eerie accuracy three cases of scandal and betrayal that have lately exploded in the press, as well as Wolfe''s forecasts ("My Three Stooges," "The Invisible Artist") of radical changes about to sweep the arts.".

A popular book on Arthritis. How to understand this illness and useful advices on diets and healthy habits. Basen on the author'' s own experience.

Wolfe details his wild cross-country ride with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, offering a vivid portrayal of the hippy subculture in its own joyful, psychedelic, excessive, and terrifying colors.

" L''audace de Tom Wolfe ? Faire entrer la totalité de la société américaine contemporaine dans une seule et unique œuvre d''art, formidable et tentaculaire ". The New York Times. " Un roman imposant, d''une ambition spectaculaire, superbement observé, et d''une drôlerie impitoyable ". Entertaimnent Weekly. " Des dialogues tranchants. Une mise en scène ébouriffante... Un chef-d''œuvre... ". The Wall Street Journal. " Un homme, un vrai rappelle l''œuvre de Dickens et des autres grands écrivains de l''ère victorienne, par la façon qu''il a d''embrasser tout l''éventail de la société humaine. Voici l''œuvre d''un journaliste hardi, aux facultés de perception aiguës, d''un homme qui croit que la fiction doit engager le monde, et qui y parvient avec une puissance narrative tout à fait singulière ". The Washington Post.

El protagonista es un yuppie, un asesor financiero que se ha convertido en la estrella de una firma de brokers, pero que se ve inmerso en rocambolescas dificultades jurdicas, matrimoniales e incluso econmicas a partir de la noche en que se pierde por las calles de Bronx cuando llevaba a su amante del aeropuerto Kennedy a su nido de amor.

En toile de fond : la guerre froide que se livrent les Américains et les Russes. L''enjeu : rien moins que les étoiles. Le projet : Mercury. Les héros : sept astronautes à la conquête du ciel, courageux, pleins d''expérience, prêts à payer. de leur peau pour goûter à la gloire. Héroïque, Chuck Yeager qui a franchi le premier le mur du son. Héroïque, John Glenn qui effectue le premier vol orbital jamais réalisé par un Américain. Héroïque, Gus Grissom qui réussit sa difficile mission... mais voilà qu''il saute à la mer, pris de panique ! Ils ont peur, ces héros ? Et leurs femmes pleurent ?.. Ça, des as ? Ou " des fils de p..., des salopards ", comme le prétend Pancho Bannes, la patronne du bar, thêàtre de scènes d''un grand comique. Ou des singes, puis-qu''ils subissent les mêmes tests que les animaux de laboratoire et qu''on leur dit sans cesse que le premier à effectuer le projet Mercury sera... un chimpanzé. Ou des pantins entre les mains des médias américains. Un peu de tout cela, donc des hommes, écrit en substance Tom Wolfe. Et leur " Etoffe " est humaine, tout simplement.

The essential collection of Tom Wolfe’s writing on a turning-point era in modern American culture. The Purple Decades brings together the author''s selections from his list of critically acclaimed publications, including the complete text of Mau-Mauing and the Flak Catchers, his account of the wild games the poverty program encouraged minority groups to play. It was in the 1960s and 1970s—those “purple decades”—that Tom Wolfe rose to fame as one of the late-twentieth-century pioneers of American literature. He became the foremost chronicler of the gaudiest period in American history, much of which is spread out before us in these selections from nine of his books. Wolfe’s innovations in style, his feats as a reporter, and his insights into modern American life dominated a period of widespread experimentation in the writing of nonfiction. Wolfe’s contributions to the language of the purple decades range from the phrases “the right stuff” to “radical chic,” the latter of which he coined in 1970, when Leonard Bernstein gave a party for the Black Panthers in his apartment on Park Avenue; and on to “the Me Decade,” as the 1970s were dubbed as soon as Wolfe’s essay “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening” appeared in 1976. The complete texts of “The Last American Hero” and “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” and long sections of “Radical Chic” and The Right Stuff, are included here in The Purple Decades. Generous selections from both From Bauhaus to Our House and The Painted Word also appear here, as well as many stories from The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, The Pump House Gang, and Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine. When Tom Wolfe’s first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, was published in 1965, Newsweek predicted: “This 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.” In these pages the falcon flies with big talons, and an even bigger grin, across the first two decades of Tom Wolfe’s literary career.

"When are the 1970''s going to begin?" ran the joke during the l976 presidential bid. In these stories and essays Wolfe meets the question head-on -- even providing the label "The Me Decade". Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.