Netflix’s Flimsy A Man in Full Makes Tom Wolfe’s Epic Novel Feel Small

Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full is a massive book, in more ways than one. A 742-page social novel with an iconoclastic Atlanta real estate mogul at its center, it took Wolfe over a decade to research and write. When it was published, in 1998, Farrar, Straus & Giroux ordered a jaw-dropping initial print run of 1.2 million hardcover copies; two years later, it had sold 1.4 million. The book’s themes—money, power, race, masculinity—are just as grand.

So it’s...