In the essays that comprise the first part of this book, Tom Wolfe offers a provocative analysis of a phenomenon that convulsed the American literary landscape: the emergence of the so-called New Journalism — a movement which, according to the author, wrested the spotlight from the sterilized and moribund Novel to become the richest literary genre of the era. The anthology of texts by Rex Reed, Terry Southern, Nicholas Tomalin, Barbara L. Goldsmith, Norman Mailer, Joe McGinnis, John Gregory Dunne, and Tom Wolfe himself — featured in the second part of the book — splendidly illustrates the author's theses.