Product Description

He's been called "the inventor of the New Journalism--and possessor of the age's most distinctive prose style."Now in this original novella, serialized to critical acclaim in Rolling Stone magazine in December 1996, Tom Wolfe, author of the bestseller The Bonfire of the Vanities, turns his penetrating eye and devastating wit to the world of TV news...

As the producer of a prime-time TV newsmagazine, Irv Durtscher fancies himself the Federico Fellini of television journalism.For who else can draw 50 million viewers, satisfy the network's gluttony for profits, and advance the cause of social justice?The only problem is that no one else recognizes Irv's genius.Instead, all the accolades go to the blonde bombshell anchor who won't give balding, near-sighted Irv the time of day.But suddenly Irv has a chance to break the most sensational story of his career--one that will surely catapult him into the national spotlight and into Madame Bombshell's heart.For months the wheels of justice have ground to a halt as three soldiers from Fort Bragg have categorically denied that they savagely beat and murdered a member of their company because he was gay.Now, Irv Durtscher, self-proclaimed soul of a soulless industry, is poised to expose the truth.With a fortune in surveillance equipment, he has infiltrated a bar near Fort Bragg, in the hopes that the unwitting soldiers will hang themselves on videotape.What he gets is pure dynamite.But Irv's story won't be complete until he arranges to ambush the three young toughs and show them the footage.What happens when one of New York's media elite confronts the Lords of Testosterone?...not what you think.

Ambush at Fort Bragg is classic Wolfe--a blistering send-up of one man's drive for fame and glory and the lengths to which the media will go to showcase their version of the truth. This is Wolfe at his very best--timely, relevant, and right on the money about many aspects of 90s America: the media, the military, the South, discrimination, and homophobia.

Not available in any book format, Ambush at Fort Bragg has been published by BDD Audio on cassette and CD.
Amazon.com Review
In Tom Wolfe's audio-only Ambush at Fort Bragg, no one escapes the author's satiric barbs. The doughy, rumpled network producer of a hard-hitting 60 Minutes-style TV show dreams of fame, while the limelight always shines instead on the tough-as-nails blonde investigative reporter in the perfect silk blouse with every hair always in place. The TV team, in their zeal to get the story, entrap a trio of skinhead gaybashers by having an exotic dancer (with the pitch-perfect name Lola Thong) lure them into a trailer, where hidden TV cameras capture their unwitting confessions.As usual, Wolfe makes it impossible to predict where your sympathies will land. Actor Edward Norton gives a delicious reading, especially in capturing the North Carolina drawls of the guilty men. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (24)

So-so
4 stars for decent writing (I do enjoy Wolfe's style; AFB was my first encounter with this author)
5 stars for a terrific reading by Edward Norton
4 stars for a story that started strong
2 stars for a weak 4th quarter and lousy non-ending
Overall: 3 star average
Equal parts humorous and repellent, AFB is worth checking out for Wolfe's style alone.I gather Wolfe has deployed his talents to much greater effect elsewhere.If your choice is between AFB and some other Wolfe novel, I'd recommend going with the other.

Seemed incomplete
This CD naration was done by Edward Norton. And he is a good at doing the stero-type "redneck" voice. It is easy to listen to.

This Tom Wolfe novella has a self-important prime time TV producer, Irv Durtscher, trying to get the rating bust show that will get his genius recognized. He belives he can prove that three soldiers from Fort Bragg were resp[onsible for the savage beating and murder of a member of their company because he was of a differrent sexual orientation. Through the use of hidden cameras and mic's, he records these three soldiers over a period of weeks. What he gets is incriminating, but he wants to get them to admit to the crime conclusivly.

So he attempts to do the standard TV news ambush. Irv arranges the three to see the footage they have recorded showing them talking about the night of the murder. When he thinks he has them, he sends out the awarded winning Anchor to grill and shock them into admitting they murdered the soldier. But the ranger takes control of the interview.

What we see is that the special would have been ruin. All sympathy and support would have gone to this thug. But because Irv wants to show how smart he is. He uses editing to make the trio of soldier look guilty. This just shows how far the media will go to show their version of the truth. And to get ratings!

I felt that Wolfe did not tie up all the loose ends. Who was the missing witness? What happened to the soldiers? If it went to trial, what happened to the producer when it was discovered the extent of the editing tha that taken place?

Wolfe-Lite, but interesting nonetheless
Tom Wolfe presents an even-handed tale about a head-twisting attempt of a newsmagazine crew to ambush military men accused of killing a gay fellow soldier.This short story will leave you wondering, "Who actually got ambushed?"The soldiers?The murdered victim?The newscrew?The American public?Possibly everyone.

In comparison to other Wolfe works, AMBUSH is relatively shallow.It's still a work that might make a number of other best-selling authors green with envy.Wolfe explores the minds of soldiers and newspeople whose motives and actions are far more complex than they appear on the surface.One would be tempted to initially label both parties in black and white judgements, but Wolfe's rich internal monologues make that difficult.The murder and it's criminal investigation ultimately become secondary to the news story and the circumstances surrounding it.

Wolfe's even-handed approach to presenting the complex details of what appears to be an open and shut case will have folks from opposite sides of life react to different details with ire.It's easy to hate the accused rednecks.They're crass, unpolished, crude, and embody every bad southern male stereotype.It also becomes easy to hate the media moguls who twist and torment the story, not because they want justice (they don't REALLY care about gay rights or even solving the crime), but because they want huge ratings.They want their names up in lights.They'd sell their souls for things they don't even believe in.The converse observation of the accused soldiers is that they'd never hide behind false pretense, even to the point of death.

The audio book has its own set of issues.Edward Norton's reading certainly hits the mark on tone and atmosphere.He's earnest, but varied in quality.(Given, deep-south--nearly-unintelligible-redneck might not be an easy accent to emmulate, but sometimes it's just painful.)The producers seemed to want to throw in "mood music" at every opportunity, so the listener is bombarded with distracting backdrops of country metal and news-promo orchestrations that add nothing to the overall mix.Please don't let that disuade you from this quick listen (about 180 minutes) is you're interested.Just consider yourself warned.

AMBUSH at FORT BRAGG comes recommended to those seeking a quick and engaging tale to fit between your larger listening projects.

Not worth the paper it is written on.
With all the books I have ever read this one comes to mind as the only one that has ever turned my stomach.I am sure there are many other ways of treating a subject like homophobia without going this route.I gave it one star because there was no option lower.

HE'S DONE BETTER
I like Tom Wolfe, but this novella was a disappointment.It is surprisingly unhumorous, the story's climax comes too early, and the novella trails off at the end.The two protagonists at first seem like perfect targets for Wolfe's satiric genius.One is the TV newsmagazine producer: male, jewish, unattractive, and self-pitying.The other is the TV newsanchor: female, WASP, beautiful, and shallow.It's too bad that Wolfe gets so little comedic mileage from them.

Wolfe seems to have thrown in a pornographic section in the novella for no other reason than salaciousness.(Certainly it was not done as a plot device -- it is absurd and unbelievable.)

Edward Norton does funny redneck voices, but otherwise his narration is dull and flat.

Despite all the bad things I've written, there are some funny moments, and some of the satire hits the mark.Overall, this recording is so-so.

By the way, this novella now is in print in Tom Wolfe's new book Hooking Up. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
Comprising Damon And Pythias, Palamon And Arcyte (Note), Gorboduc, Or Ferrex And Porrex, Notebook And Wordlist. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Stephen Wolfram, Henri Poincaré, Aleksandr Lyapunov, Benoît Mandelbrot, Edward Norton Lorenz, Steven Strogatz, Vladimir Damgov, Otto Rössler, Boris Chirikov, Brosl Hasslacher, Denis Blackmore, Mitchell Feigenbaum, James Murdoch Austin, J. Doyne Farmer, Norman Packard, Floris Takens, Harry Swinney, James A. Yorke, David Ruelle, Michael Barnsley, Michel Hénon, Theodor Schwenk. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 110. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Jules Henri Poincaré (29 April 1854 17 July 1912) (French pronunciation: ) was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, and a philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as The Last Universalist, since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime. As a mathematician and physicist, he made many original fundamental contributions to pure and applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and celestial mechanics. He was responsible for formulating the Poincaré conjecture, one of the most famous problems in mathematics. In his research on the three-body problem, Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. He is considered to be one of the founders of the field of topology. Poincaré introduced the modern principle of relativity and was the first to present the Lorentz transformations in their modern symmetrical form. Poincaré discovered the remaining relativistic velocity transformations and recorded them in a letter to Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz (1853-1928) in 1905. Thus he obtained perfect invariance of all of Maxwell's equations, an important step in the formulation of the theory of special relativity. The Poincaré group used in physics and mathematics was named after him. Poinc...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=48740 ... Read more

Product Description
The Cover Story - Oh! The Wild, Wild West - With their new film, the formula-breaking 21st-century western "Down in the Valley," two cool customers - Edward Norton and Evan Rachel Wood - are out to kick up some dust. In an exclusive home-on-the-range portfolio, photographer Bruce Weber captures the outlaw magic. Interviews by Ingrid Sischy and Roberto Benabib. Also in this issue - The New Showstoppers: Chris Brown by Ciara, The Monkey Wrenches in the System Interview: Lili Taylor by Johnny Depp, The Make Love, Not War Fashion Story, The Nobody, But Nobody, Puts Baby in a Box Interview: Chloe Sevigny by Selma Blair, Her Comes the Son Interview: Max Minghella by Peter Sarsgaard, Chris Pine, Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde, Ex-Miss Transylvania Monica Dean, Joel Edgerton, Jon Voight, Elton John, and much more! ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Science and Its Times, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 636 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The histories of science, technology, and mathematics merge with the study of humanities and social science in this interdisciplinary reference work. Essays on people, theories, discoveries, and concepts are combined with overviews, bibliographies of primary documents, and chronological elements to offer students a fascinating way to understand the impact of science on the course of human history and how science affects everyday life. Entries represent people and developments throughout the world, from about 2000 B.C. through the end of the twentieth century. ... Read more

Product Description
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
The Age of Enlightenment profoundly enriched religious and philosophical understanding and continues to influence present-day thinking. Works collected here include masterpieces by David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as religious sermons and moral debates on the issues of the day, such as the slave trade. The Age of Reason saw conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism transformed into one between faith and logic -- a debate that continues in the twenty-first century.
++++
The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
++++
British Library

T010626

Half-title: 'Dr. Norton's sermon preached before the Lord-Mayor, &c. ..on Sunday the 6th. of April, 1701.'.

London : printed for Benj. Tooke, 1701. [4],24p. ; 4° ... Read more

Product Description
Title: The Dramatic Writings of Richard Edwards, Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, Comprising Damon and Pythias, Palamon and Arcyte (Note), Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, Note-Book and Wordlist. Edited by John S. FarmerPublisher: London Priv. print. for subscribers by the Early English Drama SocietyPublication date: 1906Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Michael Chabon, Edward Norton, Randy Pausch, Jayson Blair, Christian Siriano, George Poe, Robert Flanagan, Edwin Warfield, Cristeta Comerford, John S. Morgan, Aaron Mcgruder, Frank Cho, Gail H. Bates, Stephen Wozniak, Kenneth Ulman, Decatur Dorsey, Henry G. Davis, Warren E. Miller, Jim Traber, Arthur Pue Gorman, John B. Tabb, Sam Phillips, Greg Hawkes, Phil Chenier, Robert H. Kittleman, Benny Mardones, Allan H. Kittleman, Ogle Marbury, Bud Delp, Roblimo, Jason Downs, Alice Mcgill, Bobby Young, Benjamin Ellicott, Thomas Christmas Riggs, Jr., Thomas Rowe Price, Jr., Bryan Czap, J. J. Outlaw, Gerrick Mcphearson. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 169. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Michael Chabon (pronounced ; born May 24, 1963) is an American author and "one of the most celebrated writers of his generation", according to The Virginia Quarterly Review. Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), was published when he was 25 and catapulted him to literary celebrity. He followed it with a second novel, Wonder Boys (1995), and two short-story collections. In 2000, Chabon published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier ... Read more

Product Description
The Real Stanley Kubrick; Dangerous Beauty: Why Patricia Duff is the Most Alluring (and Expensive) Woman in NY, DC and LA; Married, With Tigers (Inside the World of Siegried and Roy); Blood-Red Ivy: The Mystery of the Murdered Yale Coed; Edward Norton; Brill's Content; The Four Seasons at 40; The Abu-Jamal Controversy ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Meteorology Competitions, Rossby Medalists, John Von Neumann, Edward Norton Lorenz, Bert Bolin, Susan Solomon, Syukuro Manabe, Jerry D. Mahlman, Carl-Gustaf Rossby, Hsiao-Lan Kuo, Jerome Namias, Jacob Bjerknes, Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, Harry Wexler, Verner E. Suomi, Jule Gregory Charney, Wxchallenge, Erik Palmén, Sverdrup Gold Medal Award, Hurd Curtis Willett, National Collegiate Weather Forecasting Contest, Buys Ballot Medal, Arnt Eliassen, Fawbush-Miller Award. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 82. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: John von Neumann (December 28, 1903 February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, continuous geometry, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics (of explosions), and statistics, as well as many other mathematical fields. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians in modern history. The mathematician Jean Dieudonné called von Neumann "the last of the great mathematicians", while Peter Lax described him as possessing the most "fearsome technical prowess" and "scintillating intellect" of the century. Even in Budapest, in the time that produced geniuses like von Kármán (b. 1881), Szilárd (b. 1898), Wigner (b. 1902), and Edward Teller (b. 1908), his brilliance stood out. Von Neumann was a pioneer of the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics, in the development of functional analysis, a principal member of the Manhattan Project and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (as one of the few originally appointed), and a key figure in the development of game theory and the concepts of cellular automata and the universal constr...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=15942 ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: John Wilkes Booth, Sylvester Stallone, Goldie Hawn, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Linda Hamilton, Edward Norton, Alexis Denisof, Robert Duvall, David Hasselhoff, John Waters, Jada Pinkett Smith, Miriam Cooper, Toni Braxton, Mýa, Mario, Jessica Lee Rose, Thomas Jane, Kathie Lee Gifford, Eddie Deezen, Martin Lawrence, Parker Posey, Divine, Edwin Booth, Francis X. Bushman, Wayne Federman, Anna Faris, John Astin, Crystal Chappell, Dan Futterman, Gary D'addario, Richard Schiff, Howard Rollins, Penn Badgley, Charles S. Dutton, Michael Cerveris, Chris Carmack, Greg Plitt, Daniel Stern, Mignon Anderson, Norman Chaney, Julie Bowen, John Glover, Mildred Natwick, Josh Charles, Judah Friedlander, Conrad Brooks, Tracie Thoms, Lance Reddick, Larry Gilliard, Jr., Henry Hodges, Sarah Jones, John Kassir, Mink Stole, Michael Ealy, Johnny Kassir, Laura Wright, Harry Solter, Johnathon Schaech, Mark Baker, Bess Armstrong, John Patrick Amedori, Peyton List, Roger Fan, Paula Marshall, Grant Aleksander, Patricia Richardson, Marianne Curan, Bobby Steggert, Robert Hays, Samantha Sterlyng, Debra Monk, Mildred Dunnock, Kimberly J. Brown, Kevin Kilner, Paul Ford, Lori Alan, Chris Adler, Ernie Lively, Thomas J. Hageboeck, Ashley Sawdaye, Tamara Dobson, Michael Tucker, Chuck Jeffreys, Kristina Sisco, Jonathan Ward, David Lochary, Jay Landsman, Jason Williams, Brendan Hines, Ben Bass, Peter Griffith, Rebeca Arthur, Linda Harrison, Noelle Beck, Karin Konoval, James Ransone, Mark Rolston, Remak Ramsay, Jay Anthony Franke, Mary Deese, Paul Swift, Pj Deboy, Al Rosen, Edmund Law Rogers Jr., John W. Albaugh, Jason Kravits, Jamie O'brien, Leah Ayres, Michael Willis, Edward Mallory, Madeline Hurlock, Schuster Vance, Daniel Ross, Joseph Crehan, Yasmine Hanani, Richard Burton, Leslie Ann Powers, Wayne Duvall, Margaret Hayes, Paul Deboy, Joel Bissonnette, Hezekiah Linthicum Bateman, John Morton, Lillian Zuckerman, Roger Davis. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 578. Not illus...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=15919 ... Read more

Product Description
Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: John Von Neumann, Edward Norton Lorenz, Bert Bolin, Susan Solomon, Syukuro Manabe, Jerry D. Mahlman, Carl-Gustaf Rossby, Hsiao-Lan Kuo, Jerome Namias, Jacob Bjerknes, Harry Wexler, Verner E. Suomi, Jule Gregory Charney, Erik Palmén, Hurd Curtis Willett, Arnt Eliassen. Excerpt:Arnt Eliassen (9 December 1915 22 April 2000) was a Norwegian meteorologist who was a pioneer in the use of numerical analysis and computers for weather forecasting . The early pioneer work was done at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey , together with John von Neumann . His areas of research included free and thermally driven circulations, frontogenesis , and shear and gravitational acoustic wave propagation in stratified media. Eliassen received the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal in 1964 for his many important contributions to dynamical meteorology. He received the very prestigious Balzan Prize in 1996 "For his fundamental contributions to dynamic meteorology that have influenced and stimulated progress in this science during the past fifty years". His is the father of the meteorologist Anton _Eliassen. References (URLs online) A hyperlinked version of this chapter is at Bert Rickard Johannes Bolin (Swedish pronunciation: ; 15 March 1925 30 December 2007) was a Swedish meteorologist who served as the first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), from 1988 to 1997. He was professor of meteorology at Stockholm University from 1961 until his retirement in 1990. Background Bolin was born in Nyköping, Sweden and graduated from Uppsala University in 1946. He earned a master s degree in 1949 and a doctorate in 1956, both in meteorology, at Stockholm University . During his doctorate he spent a year in 1950 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New... ... Read more