num_pages: 742
description: Big men. Big money. Big games. Big libidos. Big trouble.A decade ago, The Bonfire of the Vanities defined an era--and established Tom Wolfe as our prime fictional chronicler of America at its most outrageous and alive. This time the setting is Atlanta, Georgia--a racially mixed late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth, avid speculators, and worldly-wise politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta real-estate entrepreneur turned conglomerate king, whose expansionist ambitions and outsize ego have at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 28,000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife--and a half-empty office tower with a staggering load of debt. When star running back Fareek Fanon--the pride of one of Atlanta's grimmest slums--is accused of raping an Atlanta blueblood's daughter, the city's delicate racial balance is shattered overnight. Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real-estate syndicates, cast-off first wives of the corporate elite, the racially charged politics of college sports--Wolfe shows us the disparate worlds of contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most phenomenal, most admired contemporary novelist.
language: English
title: A Man in Full
titlecomplete: A Man in Full
characters: Wes Jordan, Charlie Croker, Roger White II, Conrad Hensley
genres: Fiction, American, Philosophy, Literature, Classics, Novels, Contemporary, Modern, Southern, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 18294
places: Atlanta, Georgia
awards: awardedAt: 883641600000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Fiction
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux