In 1979, Wolfe published The Right Stuff, a hefty account of the launching of the American space program after World War II. Others followed: The Pump House Gang (1968) featured more observations about Sixties culture and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) captured the LSD-infused antics of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965) assembled these articles into book form and gave Wolfe his first best seller. Wolfe also produced a series of articles for Esquire and New York that laid the foundation for the New Journalism, a style of writing that combined journalistic accuracy with a novelist's eye for description, theme, and point of view. In 1962, he became a reporter for the New York Herald-Tribune and a staff writer for New York magazine, pounding out stories alongside Jimmy Breslin. Like other writers before him, Wolfe yearned to test his talents in New York. A tour as The Washington Post's Latin American correspondent followed in 1960, earning him an award from the Washington Newspaper Guild for his coverage of the Cuban revolution. in American Studies from Yale in 1957, Wolfe plunged into a decade-long career as a newspaperman, beginning with a stint at the Springfield (Massachusetts) Union. As the man in the iconic white suit with a swaggering pen, Wolfe has spent the past fifty years chronicling America's status battles and capturing our cultural zeitgeist.Īfter earning a Ph.D. 'I think every living moment of a human being's life, unless the person is starving or in immediate danger of death in some other way, is controlled by a concern for status,' Tom Wolfe has said.

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