The story is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City, and centers on three main characters: WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish assistant district attorney Larry Kramer, and British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow.
The city was polarized by several high-profile incidents of racism, particularly the murders—in white neighborhoods—of two black men: Willie Turks, who was murdered in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn in 1982, and Michael Griffith who was killed in Howard Beach, Queens, in 1986.
In another episode that received much attention from the news media, Bernhard Goetz became something of a folk-hero in the city for shooting a group of young black men who tried to rob him in the subway in 1984.
To overcome a case of writer's block, Wolfe wrote to Jann Wenner, editor of Rolling Stone, to propose an idea drawn from Charles Dickens and Thackeray.
(Wolfe came up with the revised occupation after spending a day on the government-bond desk of Salomon Brothers, with many of the traders who later founded the notorious hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
The book was a commercial and critical success, spending weeks on bestseller lists and earning praise from much of the literary establishment on which Wolfe had long heaped scorn.
His $3 million Park Avenue co-op apartment, combined with his wife's extravagances and other expenses required to keep up appearances are depleting his great income, or as McCoy calls it, a "hemorrhaging of money."
McCoy's secure life as a self-regarded "Master of The Universe" on Wall Street is gradually destroyed when he and his mistress, Maria Ruskin, accidentally enter the Bronx at night while they are driving back to Manhattan from Kennedy Airport.
Peter Fallow, a has-been, alcoholic journalist for the tabloid City Light, is given the opportunity of a lifetime when he is persuaded to write a series of articles about Henry Lamb, a black youth who has said he has been the victim of a hit and run by a wealthy white driver.
Fallow cynically tolerates the manipulations of Reverend Bacon, a Harlem religious and political leader who sees the hospitalized youth as a projects success story gone wrong.
Up for re-election and accused of foot-dragging in the Lamb case, the media-obsessed Bronx County District Attorney Abe Weiss pushes for McCoy's arrest.
The arrest all but ruins McCoy; distraction at work causes him to flub on finding an investor for a $600 million bond on which he had pegged all his hopes of paying the loan on his home and covering his family costs.
Hoping to impress his boss as well as a former juror, Shelly Thomas, Assistant District Attorney Larry Kramer prosecutes the case, opening with an unsuccessful bid to set McCoy's bail at $250,000.
Fallow later wins the Pulitzer Prize and marries the daughter of City Light owner Sir Gerald Steiner, while Ruskin has escaped prosecution and remarried.