Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up
I bought Hooking Up Saturday morning and finished it that day. A few years ago, my Pulitzer-winning journalism professor spent several of our three-hour, once-a-week classes doing nothing but reading from this book. What more of a recommendation do you need?
Wolfe discusses a great variety of subjects – microprocessors, Darwinism, John Updike, Dissenting Protestantism – often in the same story, and yet he weaves a number of common themes throughout the book. His favorites are the increasing irrelevance and anemia of American literature, the profusion of intellectuals and artists lacking in skill and hard work, and the theories of neuroscientists, Darwinists, and digifuturists that promise to revolutionize society but often ignore the truth. And, of course, it's all written in Wolfe's unique style, capable of setting any pace, any tone, and catching you up in his words, even when they're not being read aloud by B.D. Colen.