A Man in Full
Tom Wolfe, 1998
★ 3.90 from 21.1k ratings on Goodreads
Atlanta in the 1990s: a debt-laden developer, a Black lawyer nicknamed Too White, and a city where status is everything. Wolfe's comic anatomy of money, race and self-invention. Wolfe's satirical voice moves with brisk comic energy through Atlanta's moneyed strivers, mixing wonder and ambition with long, obsessive detail.
Feels like wonder, joy and hope. About ambition, love and nature.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy big social novels about status, race and money, told with a reporter's eye and a comic edge. Be warned that its length and obsessive descriptions frustrate some readers, and the satire can feel shallow or the plot contrived.
Why read it
It offers a sprawling, funny portrait of a city inventing itself, and a close look at how money and race shape self-respect.
A page from the book
The shock of seeing youth from the wrong side of a windshield.
Roger Too White — and in that moment this old nickname of his, Roger Too White, which he had been stuck with ever since Morehouse, came bubbling up, uninvited, into his own brain — Roger Too White stared through the windshield of his Lexus, astonished. Out the passenger-side window of a screaming-red Chevrolet Camaro just ahead of him, in the lane to his left, shot one leg of a pair of fiercely pre-faded blue jeans. A girl. He could tell it was a girl because of the little caramel-colored foot that protruded from the jeans, shod only in the merest of sandals. Then, much faster than it would take to tell it, out the window came her hip, her little bottom, her bare midriff, her tube top, her wide shoulders, her long wavy black hair with its heavenly auburn sheen. Youth! She hadn’t even bothered to open the door. What readers say
Readers found the novel gripping and richly populated, with memorable characters and a vivid Atlanta setting, though many were frustrated by its length and obsessive descriptions; some also found the satire shallow or the plot contrived.
Tom Wolfe.Tom Wolfe reported in a white suit and wrote every first draft in longhand. He was 68 when A Man in Full appeared, eleven years after The Bonfire of the Vanities.
Books that feel like this
Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut, 1973
A little-read science-fiction hack, a car dealer coming apart, and a narrator who walks into his own book to tell them both the truth.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is A Man in Full for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy big social novels about status, race and money, told with a reporter's eye and a comic edge. Be warned that its length and obsessive descriptions frustrate some readers, and the satire can feel shallow or the plot contrived.
- What is A Man in Full like?
- Wolfe's satirical voice moves with brisk comic energy through Atlanta's moneyed strivers, mixing wonder and ambition with long, obsessive detail. Feels like wonder, joy and hope. About ambition, love and nature.
- What should I read after A Man in Full?
- If you liked A Man in Full, try Space (James Michener), Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray) and Yesteryear (Caro Claire Burke).
A taste of the feed
A weapon so fast that hearing it means you survived.
Even on the radar it displayed its silent speed, more than two thousand miles an hour. It would not be heard at this station until some moments after it had passed. Then sonic booms would thunder through the air, reassuring the listeners that this bomb at least had passed them by. “If you hear it,” the sergeant explained to Mott, “it’s already gone.”
Space · James Michener
The voice policing a woman's anger often wears her own face.
A voice in my head, echoing softly: America hates angry women. The Lord hates angry women. You hate angry women. Do not be an angry woman.
Yesteryear · Caro Claire Burke
A knock at the door, twelve light-years from home.
Knock-knock-knock No, that’s not creepy at all. Being in a spaceship twelve light-years from home and having someone knock on the door is totally normal.
Project Hail Mary · Andy Weir
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