Hooking Up [Paperback]

InHooking Up, Tom Wolfe ranges from coast to coast observing 'the lurid carnival actually taking place in the mightiest country on earth in the year 2000.' From teenage sexual manners and mores to fundamental changes in the way human beings now regard themselves thanks to the hot new fields of genetics and neuroscience; from his legendary profile of William Shawn, editor ofThe New Yorker(first published in 1965), to a remarkable portrait of Bob Noyce, the man who invented Silicon Valley, Tom Wolfe the master of reportage and satire returns in vintage form.

At heart he is and always will be a terrific reporter.Hooking Upprovides a great introduction to Wolfe the nonfiction stylist: the peerless portraitist, the contrarian social critic and the literary bomb thrower. The book's title is a sexual metaphor, but in Wolfe's hands, it means making connections among the culture's disparate corners. And nobody hooks up better than he does. Malcolm Jones, Newsweek

The rich retrospective of one of America's finest writers. Michael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun

The publication ofHooking Up, Wolfe's first book of short pieces in 20 years, is reason enough for celebration . . . Delicious. Benjamin Svetkey, Entertainment Weekly

Turn to the three essays grouped under the title The Human Beast, and you will be in Wolfe heaven. The first of these--is an exuberant history of the birth of Silicon Valley...'Digibabble, Fairy Dust, and the Human Anthill' moves from the semiconductor industry to the Internet and then, by a kind of intuitive leap, to neuroscience and sociobiology. 'Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died' delves into brain imaging and the genetic determination of character. Jesuit priest Piere Teilhard de Chardin, closet Catholic Marshall McLuhan, and scientist Edmund O. Wilson are the pivotal figures of these two essays. Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times

I love Tom Wolfe 'Whenever some lc‰