The essay was first published as the cover story in the August 23, 1976, issue of New York magazine[1] and later appeared in his collection Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine.

[2] In one of the essay's most famous passages, exemplifying his style of description, Wolfe called Jimmy Carter a "Missionary lectern-pounding Amen ten-finger C-major-chord Sister-Martha-at-the-Yamaha-keyboard loblolly piney-woods Baptist.

The term "'Me' Decade" describes a general new attitude of Americans in the 1970s, in the direction of atomized individualism and away from communitarianism, in clear contrast with social values prevalent in the United States during the 1960s.

Wolfe states that the "chivalric tradition" and the philosophy behind "the finishing school" are inherently dedicated to the building and forming of personal character and conduct.

[1] Wolfe believes that the counterculture of the 1960s and the New Left school of thought promoted a recovery of the self in a flawed and corrupt America, a philosophy extended in the 1970s with a spreading idea that use of the drug LSD, commonly known as "acid", would unveil a true and real self.