In the first book to encompass Tom Wolfe's career thus far - he was born in 1931 - William McKeen calls him "The Great Emancipator of Journalism." Tracing Wolfe's innovative work from his early days at the Washington Post and the New York Herald-Tribune through his glory days at Esquire and Rolling Stone, McKeen unravels the fascinating tale of how "the man in the white suit" pioneered the New Journalism, changing the nature of reportive writing since the 1950s.

McKeen also delves into Wolfe's innovative novels, both fiction and non-fiction, from his "breakthrough" work, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965) through the bestselling The Right Stuff (1979) and The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987). McKeen portrays Wolfe as a brilliant cultural observer, who, for the last half of this century, has held a funhouse mirror up to the pandemonium that is America.

McKeen's study reveals how Wolfe brought journalism, once the bastard child of literature, onto a higher plane, where it remains on a par with the novel - as an art form that is not merely the means toward an end but a satisfying end in itself.