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.

One night in the Bronx a millionaire, Sherman McCoy, and his mistress have an accident. The next day a young Black is in hospital in a coma as McCoy heads for disaster. His humiliation is at the centre of a satire on the decaying class, racial and political structure of New York in the 1980s.

Tom Wolfe introduces a wide range of journalistic reportage by writers including Truman Capote, Terry Southern, George Plimpton, Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson.

Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from Sparta, North Carolina, is on a full scholarship. She learns that for the upper-crust coeds of Dupont, sex, Cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time. As Charlotte encounters Dupont's elite, she gains a new, revelatory sense of her own power, that of her difference and of her very innocence.

Atlanta conglomerate king, Charles Croker, has expansionist ambitions and an outsize ego. He also has a young and demanding second wife and a half-empty office tower running up debts. When a football star from Atlanta's grimmest slum is accused of rape, the city's racial balance is shattered.

Takes a satirical look at how, during that period of cultural upheaval, minority groups from the ghettoes refined the art of intimidating the white bureaucracy. This work includes essays that aim to transport the reader back to the heady days of hippie revolution and Black Power.

Buttons presents more than 1000 examples of the art of button-making. Pictured here are the buttons from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries made from a variety of materials: glass, porcelain, pearl, gold, silver and brass.

Discusses the sexual manners and mores of teenagers. This book provides an investigation of the fundamental ways in which our lives and self-perceptions have changed, living as we do in a modern world of genetic engineering and neuroscience.

Looks at the American scene of the early 1960s and zeroes in on the forms of status-seeking then in vogue from New York to Los Angeles. This book finds a unique American energy in the dances, bouffant hairdos, stock-car racing and rock concerts. It eulogizes the flamboyant 'kustomized kars' California teens constructed with artistic dedication.

A retrospective collection of Wolfe's work, twenty-one essays and extracts, from 1964 to 1981, running through the whole mad circus of his American subcultures - from Surfers, Acid Freaks, West Side Divorcees and Soho Bohos to Astronauts, Moonies, Manhattan Socialites, Mid-Atlantic Men, Pop Painters and Down-filled People.