The Bonfire of the Vanities

Reissued for today’s reader with a cover by the renowned artist Seymour Chwast and an introduction by the critically acclaimed author Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The Bonfire of the Vanities is vintage Tom Wolfe at his best.

“No one has portrayed New York Society this accurately and devastatingly since Edith Wharton.” (The National Review)

“A page-turner . . . Brilliant high comedy.” (The New Republic)

Tom Wolfe’s panoramic novel of the go-go New York City of the 1980s has lost none of its furious luster. The portrait of power (those who have it and those who want it) and the book’s dissection of the racial and ethnic tensions simmering below the city’s gleaming veneer have only grown more pointed with time. Wolfe is unblinking, lavish, gleeful, and damning in this quintessential novel of the ’80s, reinforcing his reputation as an unmatched chronicler of the twisted, contradictory, and glamorous abodes of power and wealth.