Twenty-five years ago, in 1987, a novel called “The Bonfire of the Vanities” was published. Written by Tom Wolfe, the book centered on a greedy, white Wall Street trader who accidentally kills a black teenager in the Bronx, then deliberately flees the scene of the accident.
Touching on issues of class privilege, racism, greed, and politics, the book was a commercial and critical success, and came to define an era in New York City and in America.
A quarter century later, the BBC is looking back on “The Bonfire of the Vanities” with journalist and personal finance expert Alvin Hall. How much has changed in New York in the years since it was published, and how much is the same?