A Man In Full (A Novel) Order Printed Copy

Author: Tom Wolfe
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About the Book

"A Man in Full" follows the story of Atlanta real estate developer Charlie Croker as he faces financial turmoil and personal challenges. The novel explores themes of race, masculinity, and power in the modern South, offering a panoramic view of contemporary American society. Through vivid characters and sharp social commentary, Tom Wolfe crafts a compelling narrative that captures the complexities of ambition, identity, and redemption.

John Newton

“Amazing Grace” is one of the most beloved hymns of the last two centuries. The soaring spiritual describing profound religious elation is estimated to be performed 10 million times annually and has appeared on over 11,000 albums. It was referenced in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin and had a surge of popularity during two of nation’s greatest crises: the Civil War and the Vietnam War. Between 1970 and 1972, Judy Collins’ recording spent 67 weeks on the chart and peaked at number 5. Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Elvis are among the many artists to record the song. Recently, President Obama burst into the familiar tune during the memorial service for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, a victim of a heinous church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. The song was written by a former enslaver Ironically, this stirring song, closely associated with the African American community, was written by a former enslaver, John Newton. This unlikely authorship forms the basis of Amazing Grace, a Broadway musical (written by Broadway first-timer Christopher Smith, a former Philadelphia policeman, and playwright Arthur Giron) which tells Newton’s life story from his early days as a licentious libertine in the British navy to his religious conversion and taking up the abolitionist cause. But the real story behind the somewhat sentimental musical told in Newton’s autobiography reveals a more complex and ambiguous history. Newton was born in 1725 in London to a Puritan mother who died two weeks before his seventh birthday, and a stern sea-captain father who took him to sea at age 11. After many voyages and a reckless youth of drinking, Newton was impressed into the British navy. After attempting to desert, he received eight dozen lashes and was reduced to the rank of common seaman. While later serving on the Pegasus, an enslaved person ship, Newton did not get along with the crew who left him in West Africa with Amos Clowe, an enslaver. Clowe gave Newton to his wife Princess Peye, an African royal who treated him vilely as she did her other enslaved people. On stage, Newton’s African adventures and enslavement are a bit more flashy with the ship going down, a thrilling underwater rescue of Newton by his loyal retainer Thomas, and an implied love affair between Newton and the Princess. Newton converted to Christianity after a miracle at sea The stage version has John’s father leading a rescue party to save his son from the calculating Princess, but in actuality, the enterprise was undertaken by a sea captain asked by the senior Newton to look for the missing John. (In the show, the elder Newton is wounded during the battle for his son’s freedom and later has a tearful deathbed scene with John on board ship.) During the voyage home, the ship was caught in a horrendous storm off the coast of Ireland and almost sank. Newton prayed to God and the cargo miraculously shifted to fill a hole in the ship’s hull and the vessel drifted to safety. Newton took this as a sign from the Almighty and marked it as his conversion to Christianity. He did not radically change his ways at once, his total reformation was more gradual. "I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time afterward,” he later wrote. He did begin reading the Bible at this point and began to view his captives with a more sympathetic view. In the musical, John abjures slavery immediately after his shipboard epiphany and sails to Barbados to search for and buy the freedom of Thomas. After returning to England, Newton and his sweetheart Mary Catlett dramatically confront the Prince of Wales and urge him to abolish the cruel practice. In real life, Newton continued to sell his fellow human beings, making three voyages as the captain of two different vessels, The Duke of Argyle and the African. He suffered a stroke in 1754 and retired, but continued to invest in the business. In 1764, he was ordained as an Anglican priest and wrote 280 hymns to accompany his services. He wrote the words for “Amazing Grace” in 1772 (In 1835, William Walker put the words to the popular tune “New Britain”) It was not until 1788, 34 years after leaving it that he renounced his former slaving profession by publishing a blazing pamphlet called “Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade.” The tract described the horrific conditions on the ships and Newton apologized for making a public statement so many years after participating in the trade: “It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.” The pamphlet was so popular it was reprinted several times and sent to every member of Parliament. Under the leadership of MP William Wilberforce, the English civil government outlawed slavery in Great Britain in 1807 and Newton lived to see it, dying in December of that year. The passage of the Slave Trade Act is depicted in the 2006 film, also called Amazing Grace, starring Albert Finney as Newton and Ioan Gruffud as Wilberforce.

God Always Sets the Table

Perhaps no act of divine provision comes and goes so quietly, so predictably, so almost imperceptibly, like our next meal. Now, for millions of people around the world, the weighty miracle is felt and revered. Unlike many of us, when they pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11), they truly do not know if and how that bread will come. They wait for food like many of us never have. When they lie down at night, having eaten enough to quiet their aching stomachs, they marvel that they did not starve today — that God fed them enough to sustain them for another 24 long hours. How slow the rest of us can be to marvel while we eat. We forget to eat. We sometimes think of meals as interruptions to an otherwise productive day. We miss the wonder, like watching three blazing sunrises every day, that the God of heaven and earth feeds us. He Brings Forth Food Psalm 104 does not miss the dumbfounding beauty of daily bread: You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart. (Psalm 104:14–15) You, O God, stretch out the infinite heavens as if it were just a tent (Psalm 104:2). You set the layers of the earth on its foundations, carefully wrapping core with mantle, and mantle with 25,000 miles of crust (Psalm 104:5). You lift the mountains with your hands, some of them 20,000 feet high, and you carve out the depths and crevices of all the valleys (Psalm 104:8). And you feed us. Our next meal stands there right alongside Mount Everest, the Grand Canyon, and the Andromeda Galaxy, among the most breathtaking wonders anywhere in creation. Have you, like me, missed the spectacular mystery laid on the plate before you? Food Is No Footnote Jesus sees what the psalmist saw, the God-sized wonder baked into life-sustaining bread. When he teaches his disciples to pray, he says, Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread . . .” (Matthew 6:9–11) Our Lord moves seamlessly from the reaches of heaven, and the ends of the earth, to the wheat on our plate. The transition is not jarring from the cosmos to the kitchen, even in his extremely concise prayer, because he sees how powerfully God must act in both. “God bakes something of himself — his worth, his mouthwatering glory — into everything we eat.” When we pause to pray and give thanks for the food before us, we have to resist thinking that these moments are trivial, peripheral, forgettable. Every meal, God sets the table. He is hallowing his name, extending his kingdom, and doing his will (among other ways) by providing his people with food. What we eat is not a footnote or afterthought for Jesus. Because he wants his Father to be glorified, he does not take his (or our) daily bread for granted. Two Great Ingredients God mixes at least two great ingredients into mealtime worship: First, he bakes something of himself — his worth, his mouthwatering glory — into everything we eat. Nothing we consume is silent about God. Every bite beckons us to enjoy something sweeter, more satisfying, more soul-sustaining: him. “The creation of food, tongues, and the human digestive system is the product of infinite wisdom knitting the world together in a harmonious whole,” writes Joe Rigney. “The variety of tastes creates categories and gives us edible images of divine things” ( The Things of Earth , 81). Second, when God prepares our food for us, he nourishes and strengthens us to do his will — to eat or drink, or whatever we do, to his glory (1 Corinthians 10:31). Man does not live by bread alone, but he will not live long without bread. God chooses us from among all the people of the earth, despite how little we deserved his love, and makes us his witnesses to the ends of the earth, and — wonder of wonders — he sustains us each and every day, hour by hour, by bringing food forth from the earth. As Rigney goes on to say, “Yes, food is given to us for our enjoyment, to enlarge our categories for knowing God. But food is also God’s way of providing us with energy and strength for the work” (85). If you have lost your sense of the mystery of your meals, remember that this food did not come ultimately from the pantry or the fridge, the grocery store or the farmer’s market, from the butcher or the harvest, but from the mind and heart of God. And he did not entrust us with mouths and meals simply to survive. He wants us to eat for more of him — to experience and enjoy more of him ourselves, and to share more of him in and for the world. My Portion Forever We will not truly wonder at our daily supply of food if we do not treasure God more than food. “My flesh and my heart may fail” — my water may dry up and my bread may not come — “but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalms 73:26). He is my portion — three full meals (and more) for hundreds of thousands of years (and more). Rigney writes, Our sense of hunger and thirst are divinely designed to highlight the soul’s hunger for spiritual food. . . . Apart from our experience of empty stomachs and parched throats, of full bellies, quenched thirsts, and the incredible variety of taste, our spiritual lives would be impoverished, and we would have no real vocabulary for spiritual desire, no mental and emotional framework for engaging with God. (81) God wants what we eat to make us hungry for him . We often eat just to make our hunger go away. What if we ate, instead, to try to taste and see and enjoy the God who feeds us? “Slow down and savor the majesty in your next meal.” Our God came, took on our flesh, and ate among us, saying, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). Then the bread of life was broken on the cross, spilling the wine of his precious blood for us — the hungry, the ungrateful, the wandering — to bring us into his new covenant (1 Corinthians 11:24–26), and secure a seat for us at “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9). Slow down and savor the majesty in your next meal. However incidental it may feel, the food is pointing to the Provider, telling his story, and anticipating the forever feast we will enjoy with him.