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?
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