"The Bonfire of the Vanities" is vintage Wolfe--the #1 bestseller that will forever define late-20th-century New York style. "No one has portrayed New York society this accurately and devastatingly since Edith Wharton"--"The National Review." Vintage Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities, the #1 bestseller that will forever define late-twentieth-century New York style. "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)Sherman McCoy, the central figure of Tom Wolfe's first novel, is a young investment banker with a fourteen-room apartment in Manhattan. When he is involved in a freak accident in the Bronx, prosecutors, politicians, the press, the police, the clergy, and assorted hustlers high and low close in on him, licking their chops and giving us a gargantuan helping of the human comedy, of New York in the 1980s, a city boiling over with racial and ethnic hostilities and burning with the itch to Grab It Now. Wolfe's novel is a big, panoramic story of the metropolis that reinforces the author's reputation as the foremost chronicler of the way we live in America. Prologue: Mutt on Fire 1(9) The Master of the Universe 9(18) Gibraltar 27(20) From the Fiftieth Floor 47(25) King of the Jungle 72(29) The Girl with Brown Lipstick 101(35) A Leader of the People 136(25) Catching the Fish 161(29) The Case 190(17) Some Brit Named Fallow 207(22) Saturday's Saturnine Lunchtime 229(16) The Words on the Floor 245(33) The Last of the Great Smokers 278(16) The Day-Glo Eel 294(22) I Don't Know How to Lie 316(24) The Masque of the Red Death 340(31) Tawkin Irish 371(16) The Favor Bank 387(21) Shuhmun 408(14) Donkey Loyalty 422(7) Calls from Above 429(12) The Fabulous Koala 441(15) Styrofoam Peanuts 456(43) Inside the Cavity 499(21) The Informants 520(15) We the Jury 535(21) Death New York Style 556(17) Hero of the Hive 573(17) Off to a Better Place 590(11) The Rendezvous 601(22) An Able Pupil 623(26) Into the Solar Plexus 649(32) Epilogue: Financier Is Arraigned 681