Rating: 
Summary: MODERN MORALITY TALE
Review: Enjoyable all the way through, and let's be honest a book has to be that.It was a story of people's lives and not just Charlie Croker. It was "Dickensian" in the sense that it contained large moral themes and took in the lives and sub plots of many characters, each edging slowly towards one another. In some sense it took on a religious feel with two characters obtaining a conversion and then "spreading the word". There were irritations: the obsession about dressing up and the fine eye detail on shirts, jackets, shoes, socks etc... and the banal emphasis on the accents, with Wolfe spelling out the the way the words were said as an echo after each sentence....plainly ridiculous!! Also the emphasis on muscles and physical strength were constantly put before us....please...Tom...we got the message in the first few chapters! But a superb read, entertaining and thoroughly deserving of the time and effort needed to get through so many pages. It was not just a story about America but of the human race.
Rating: 
Summary: An "American" Tale
Review: Wolfe's tale of the intersecting lives of ambitious men strikes the poignant chord of striving for improvement that is America. No matter what our station in life, most Americans are dreaming of something grander than what they currently possess. We are forever letting go of the bird in the hand for the two that are in the bush. A Man in Full thus is very much like Fitzgerald's classic The Great Gatsby and Gaille's recent (2002) The Law Review, all of which explore the price that Americans pay for ambition.
Rating: 
Summary: Pales in Comparison
Review: Although I bought this book some time ago, I held off reading it for the fear that, following Wolfe's previous novel, "The Bonfire of the Vanities", it was bound to be a disappointment. Possibly I set myself up, but sure enough, I thought that "A Man in Full" pales in comparison. The plot is centred on the property mogul Charlie Croker, and his decaying empire - Croker is presented with a way to recover his fortunes, but it's a Faustian dilemma he's faced with. We have here the main underpinning elements of "Bonfire", only reprised in a Georgian, late 1990s environment - the clash between the pursuit of money and moral rectitude/justice. Racial and social tensions are explored (yet again). I thought that Wolfe might have been trying to examine the effects of what he perceives to be a breakdown (or restructuring) of American capitalism and society in the 1990s - the disintegration of sectors of the economy under an increasing burden of debt - the result of over-optimistic speculation in the past - and the effects this has on all sectors of society (those at the top, middle and bottom, of all races). This would all be very interesting had I not felt that I was getting a retread rather than a new tyre. Having said that, I found that there was plenty in "A Man in Full" to keep me entertained - Wolfe has a wry, sardonic humour and the plot is pacey, if at times a bit too "Dallas-esque". In all, then, not a bad novel, but not up to his previous effort, which I suppose in a way makes me regard the "Bonfire" in an even higher esteem.
Rating:
Summary: A Societal Vista
Review: This book is a vista, tying together many currents of society: 1) The dynamics of Atlanta and surrounding communities, 2) Life within African-American culture, 3) Boom-town developers and their genetically motivated underpinings, 4) The economically unsuccessful and their adaptations, 5) Political refugees from Asia, 6) The unremitting drive for the pursuit of status beyond any pretense of meeting basic needs, 7) Societal wars. This is a big vista, skillfully rendered. The ending is abrupt. Tom Wolfe himself said he didn't know how to end this appropriately, which shows. Yet the ending did appeal to me in its whimsicalness. A heck of a book.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing
Review: A MAN IN FULL is author Tom Wolfe at his best, which is to say: Brilliant. As a social historian, there is no one better than Wolfe. He details his stories with an abundance of background detail that add to these stories' success in ringing chords of truth. Wolfe also is a satirist, noting and then puncturing the bubbles of pretension that permeate every stratum of society. A MAN IN FULL is a vast novel, almost Dickensonian in its scope. It crosses the United States, in the process touching on many of the subcultures and social classes which now reside within our borders. Wolfe never loses his pitch, crafting a plot in which every one of the multitude of detail pulls together into a cohesive whole. He keeps the reader engrossed to the final page.
Rating: 
Summary: Over The Top Flop
Review: Simply, the longest cartoon ever. There is no grit here, just bluster and farce. Frankly, the story just isn't very interesting (even before it gets silly)and Wolfe must have realized that at some point in the writing, necessitating his shift to anexaggerated narrative that simply never gains traction or provokes any empathy for any character.
Rating: 
Summary: More fuel for the Bonfire
Review: If you liked the earlier Tom Wolfe, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Radical Chic, The Right Stuff, but were unable to finish Bonfire of the Vanities, you might be able to plow through Wolfe's latest, but only if you have a week at the beach and truly nothing else to do. This is more social commentary on the level of Vanity Fair or the New Yorker. Interesting character development but reliant upon various dei ex machina to bail those characters out of implausible situations. Believable only if you think Fox TV would devote a weekly TV show to a fatuous cracker spouting Epictetus.
Rating:
Summary: Great Until the End
Review: This was a really great book. I couldn't put it down. The characters were very well developed and I felt that I knew each one very well in the end. However, the ending was bizarre. I was disappointed in the last 100 or so pages (it is a very long book). It was almost like Mr. Wolfe just got tired of writing it, so he threw in a quick, sort of goofy ending just to be done with it. I would read something else of his, though because I did enjoy the vast majority of it very much.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely worth the time it takes to read it
Review: Tom Wolfe is full of great ideas and observances about the absurd society we live in, however, his prose tend to go into long tedious descriptions that just become rhetorical, and not necessary to the core of the story. I almost shucked this book several times while plowing through, and skimming a lot of the first 400 pages, but I'm glad I pursued. After the first half it is smooth sailing, and truly entertaining, if not shocking. This is a story of Charlie Crocker, a 60-year-old self-made Southern real estate tycoon, who, with all his disgusting faults and habits, is still somewhat of a sympathetic character. He entertains society's upper crust in Atlanta, Georgia, and at his multi-million dollar farm. He prides himself for his open mind and the way he treats his hired help, while he unconsciously projects racial slurs, alienating potential investors and colleagues. He has a new very young trophy wife, Sabrina, and a baby daughter. His first wife, Martha, tries hard to fit back into high-society without the support of her husband (even though she's the one who comes from old money), which lends a sub-story to this novel. His big venture, Crocker Concourse, a huge office complex on the outskirts of Atlanta, is going broke, and sinking poor Charlie deeper into debt. Unbeknownst to his beautiful young wife, the poor sucker is going broke. But he's not going to go down without a fight. Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent outside of Oakland, California, in one of Crocker's Frozen Foods storage plants, a young man and victim of circumstance, Conrad Hensley, is getting himself into one mess after another. Much of Conrad's troubles come when he is laid off from his job due to Crocker following his lawyer's advice to downsize some of his assets. Through frustration and humiliation, Conrad reacts to his situation until he ends up in a California prison. How do Conrad and Crocker meet up and become co-dependent? How does Conrad provide an escape for Crocker's financial woes? Wolfe has created a clever solution to Charlie Crocker's problems that depicts the Southern character at its worse. There are several stories within the main story, which make this book rich and entertaining as well as a social statement about human nature, the inflated male ego, sexism, racism, and corruption on a government and corporate level... There is a very descriptive section about the mating of a prize stallion on Crocker's farm, that reflects Charlie's machismo nature at the highest level, which is utterly shocking to the reader, but very affective! Aside from Wolfe's tendency to over describe, this is a great book!
Rating:
Summary: Great book ... Awkward ending
Review: As many have already pointed out, the ending of this book is not particularly satisfying. However, the story itself is wonderfully complex with characters who are vivid and disctinct. Wolfe does a superb job with his descriptions and the scenes are very entertaining. Some are just down right funny. Especially fun are the few occasions when the reader is privy to multiple perspectives of the same event; when we are given the opportunity to see the differences between women and men, or blacks and whites. The body of the story is so strong and enjoyable, that the flaws of the conclusion do not sufficiently distract from the value of the book as a whole. I would definitely recommend this book!
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