“But what was he really like?”
That’s the question Tom Wolfe—chronicler of American life through legendary works like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and A Man in Full—wanted biographers to answer. In this buoyant book-length study of the man, Joe Mysak, who first met Wolfe in 1977, obliges.
Mysak shows us a Wolfe who was an assassin on the page yet prized politeness and manners. A Wolfe who was a caustic critic of the culturati yet was wildly ambitious and obsessed with status. A Wolfe whose stylistic innovations disrupted an entire era of American literature yet was accused of being a reactionary by many of his peers.
Drawing from the 236 boxes of Wolfe material in the New York Public Library; interviews with dozens of family members, friends, and acquaintances; and his personal relationship with his subject, Mysak skillfully traces Wolfe’s eventful life. From his youth in Richmond, Virginia; to his hitherto unknown years in graduate school at Yale; to his newspaper apprenticeship; to his takeover of the magazine world; to his popular success as a historian and novelist, Mysak gives us a portrait of Wolfe that is as revealing as it is recognizable.
PUBLICATION DATE: May 11, 2027



















