The Purple Decades by Tom Wolfe
In the 1960s and the 1970s Tom Wolfe rose to fame as the foremost chronicler of the gaudiest period in American history. It began at a hot rod and custom car show where he marvelled at the little nest of pink angora angel's hair used for the purpose of "glamourous" display. It grew - with his fascination for the Las Vegas-style neon sculpture boom and its electro-pastel surge through the suburbs - into "the kandy-kolored tangerine - flake streamline baby" and the new journalism was born. Wolfe's innovations in style, his feats as a reporter and his insights into sections of America which now had the money to build monuments to their enthusiasms, dominated a period of widespread experimentaiton in the writing of non-fiction. This book describes this period in Wolfe's life.