‘The hell with it . . . let chaos reign . . . louder music, more wine . . . All the old traditions are exhausted and no new one is yet established. All bets are off! The odds are cancelled! It’s anybody’s ballgame . . . ’

Tom Wolfe introduces and exults in his generation’s journalistic talent:

Truman Capote inside the mind of a psychotic killer

Hunter S. Thompson skunk drunk at the Kentucky Derby

Michael Herr dispatching reality from the Vietnam killing fields

Rex Reed giving the star treatment to the ageing Ava Gardner

As well as

Norman Mailer

Joe Eszterhas

Terry Southern

Nicholas Tomalin

George Plimpton

James Mills

Gay Talese

Joan Didion

and many other legends of tape and typewriter telling it like it is from Warhol’s Factory to the White House lawn, from the saddle of a Harley to the toughest football team in the US.