BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES: It's the epic that crystallizes the 1980s—a combination of the bad old days and the Me Decade. Tom Wolfe made his fiction debut with a 659-page opus about a bond trader, Sherman McCoy, whose privileged life spirals out of control when he and his mistress find themselves in the Bronx and end up killing a black teen with his car. NYC's racial tension and classism get worked over, with a cast of characters that includes a tabloid reporter, a black activist reverend, lawyers and a tough judge.

After being serialized in Rolling Stone, the book was published in October 1987—the same month as the Black Monday Crash. The next month, Donald Trump published his part-memoir, part-"This is how I'm successful" book, The Art of the Deal. And then, in December, Oliver Stone releasedWall Street. And in this new Gilded Age, it feels as relevant as ever