Tom Wolfe is one of the most influential journalists of our time. His works have revolutionized the way we look at pop culture and the figures that drive it, such as Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. He has published many novels and he shows no signs of slowing down.

Tom Wolfe was born and raised in Richmond, VA. He was educated at Washington and Lee University where he obtained his bachelors degree in 1951 and Yale University where he got his Ph.D. in American studies in 1957(Wolfe 417). In December of 1956 he took his first serious journalism job as a reporter on the Springfield Union in Massachusetts. This was the first step in a ten-year newspaper career as a general assignment reporter.

In 1962 Wolfe became a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune. While still working at the Tribune he penned his first book, a collection of articles about the flamboyant Sixties written for New York and Esquire and published in 1965 as The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamlined Baby ("Tom Wolfe"). The book became a best seller and pushed Wolfe to the forefront of experiments in nonfiction that later became known as the New Journalism ("Tom Wolfe").

After Kesey's brush with the law he realizes that it is time for the "graduation". He calls for a meeting of the acid culture heads and is not greeted warmly. The men are appalled at the fact that Kesey wants to embark on the journey to the center of the mind with out the use of their beloved drugs. Eventually, Kesey gets to speak his mind to the people at the "graduation" rally and is received with confusion by his followers. And as part of his barging with the law he became a kind of anti-drug spokesman.

With this book Tom Wolfe opened the world's eyes to what was really going on in the 60's acid culture scene. He showed the parents that all hippies were not evil, but he also showed the kids that there are a lot of problems with the acid culture. His journalism revolutionized the way non-fiction is written.

two bestsellers on the same day: The Pump House Gang, made up of mare articles about life in the sixties, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a nonfiction story of the hippie era. In 1970 he published Radical Chick & Mau-Mauing the Flack Catchers, a highly controversial book about racial friction in America. The first section was a detailed account of a party Leonard Bernstein gave for the black panthers in his Park Avenue duplex, and the second portrayed the inner workings of the governments poverty program ("Tom Wolfe").

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Approximate Word count = 1223
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)