Explore the real-world places that appear in A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Croker Concourse (Fictional Office Tower), Peachtree Center, Buckhead, Piedmont Driving Club, Turpmtine Plantation (Southwest Georgia) and 7 more.
Downtown Atlanta — Charlie Croker's mortgaged skyscraper
Croker Concourse is the glass-and-steel office complex built by Charlie Croker's firm, Croker Global Corporation. Its massive debt, held by PlannersBanc, sits at the center of Charlie's financial crisis. Raymond Peepgass and the bankers circle as Charlie scrambles to keep the Concourse and his empire from collapsing.
Downtown Atlanta's skyline was transformed in the 1970s and 80s by developers such as John Portman, whose Peachtree Center and hotels reshaped the city. Wolfe modeled Croker's overextended building on the era's speculative office boom and bust.
The area around Peachtree Center and Downtown remains Atlanta's business and convention district. No actual Croker Concourse exists, but the surrounding towers reflect the world Wolfe satirized.
Peachtree Street NE — Atlanta's real-world model of Croker's boom
Downtown's atrium-style towers form the backdrop for the banking and development world in which Charlie Croker, Harry Zale, Raymond Peepgass, and the PlannersBanc officers maneuver. Charlie's ego and debt are expressed through this kind of grand real-estate vision.
Peachtree Center was developed by architect-developer John Portman beginning in the 1960s. It helped define Atlanta as a modern convention city and a symbol of the New South.
Peachtree Center is a complex of office towers, a mall, and a MARTA station in the heart of downtown. It is accessible to the public as a commercial and transit hub.
Visit: Peachtree Center (landmark)
North Atlanta — Home turf of the city's wealthy elite
Buckhead is the affluent enclave where Charlie Croker's world of status and wealth lives, including his second wife Serena and the social set around him. The mansions, galas, and country club culture show the Atlanta elite whom Wolfe skewers, and where Charlie's financial decline would be a public humiliation.
Buckhead grew from a rural crossroads into Atlanta's wealthiest neighborhood in the 20th century. By the late 1990s it was synonymous with luxury shopping, estates, and Southern high society.
Buckhead is a major district of upscale retail, restaurants, hotels, and residential estates. Visitors can explore Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza as well as the Buckhead Village area.
Visit: Buckhead Village District (landmark)
Piedmont Avenue — Model for Atlanta's old-money social world
The social milieu of Atlanta's old-money establishment, with its clubs and dinners, forms a backdrop against which Charlie Croker, the brash self-made developer, measures himself. Such rarefied settings heighten the contrast between Croker's bravado and the powerful bankers who hold his fate.
Founded in 1887, the Piedmont Driving Club is one of Atlanta's oldest and most exclusive private social clubs. It sits beside Piedmont Park on land once used for the 1895 Cotton States Exposition's neighboring grounds.
The club remains a private members-only institution and is not open to the public.
Baker County, GA area — Charlie's 29,000-acre quail-hunting estate
Turpmtine is Charlie Croker's vast quail-hunting plantation in southwest Georgia, a symbol of his rise and his Southern-gentleman self-image. Charlie takes guests there for lavish hunts, with Black staff and the legacy of Southern plantation hierarchy on display. The property is also heavily mortgaged and threatened by his debts.
Southwest Georgia's Red Hills region is known for large quail-hunting plantations, many established by wealthy Northern industrialists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The tradition continues as a status marker for wealthy landowners.
The Albany–Thomasville corridor includes private hunting preserves and plantations, along with some historic sites. The area is largely rural and mostly private land.
Pryor Street — Legal and political machinery of the Roy Bellman and Fareek Fanon rape case
The criminal-justice system around the accusation against Georgia Tech football star Fareek 'The Cannon' Fanon, charged with rape by Elizabeth Armholster, the daughter of a Croker associate, drives the political plot. Mayor Wes Jordan and attorney Roger White II navigate the racially charged case, which Charlie is urged to speak on publicly as a favor to the city.
Fulton County's courts and government offices cluster in downtown Atlanta near the state Capitol. The county has historically been the center of Atlanta's legal and political life.
The Fulton County Justice Center complex remains an active courthouse. Public access is restricted to court business and security screening.
Mitchell Street SW — Mayor Wesley Dobbs Jordan's domain
Mayor Wes Jordan, Atlanta's shrewd Black mayor, operates from the city's political center, balancing racial politics, business interests, and the explosive Fanon case. His interactions with Roger White II and Charlie Croker show the city's uneasy coalition of Black political power and white business money.
Atlanta City Hall has long been the seat of the city's government and a center of its Black political leadership since Maynard Jackson became mayor in 1974. The city's identity as a Black political capital runs through its history.
Atlanta City Hall continues as the city's government headquarters. Visitors can attend public meetings and view the surrounding government district.
Visit: Atlanta City Hall (landmark)
North Avenue NW — Fareek Fanon's football stardom
Fareek 'The Cannon' Fanon is the star running back at Georgia Tech whose football fame turns his rape accusation into a citywide crisis. The campus embodies the pressure to protect a revered athlete and the racial tensions that complicate the accusation brought by Elizabeth Armholster.
Georgia Tech was founded in 1885 and its Yellow Jackets football program has long been a point of Atlanta pride. Bobby Dodd Stadium is among the oldest on-campus stadiums in major college football.
Georgia Tech is a leading public research university with an open campus. Visitors can tour the grounds and attend games at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
Visit: Georgia Tech Campus (landmark)
Southeast Atlanta — Conrad Hensley's struggling world
Conrad Hensley, a young, laid-off worker with a wife and child, lives on the edge of poverty in the Bay Area at first, but his world of unforgiving labor connects to Croker through the Croker Global Foods freezer warehouse where he works. His downward path from layoff to jail represents the book's counterpoint to Charlie's privilege.
Atlanta's southeastern neighborhoods developed as industrial and working-class areas with railroad and warehouse jobs. Deindustrialization left many communities economically strained in later decades.
These areas have seen redevelopment and gentrification, particularly around East Atlanta Village, which offers restaurants and music venues.
Rice Street NW — Where Conrad Hensley discovers Stoic philosophy
In jail, Conrad Hensley comes under threat from violent inmates and finds salvation in a copy of Epictetus's Stoic writings. His discovery of Stoicism gives him inner strength and begins his transformation into the book's 'man in full.' His arc later intersects with Charlie Croker's own crisis of values.
The Fulton County Jail has been a long-running and troubled facility, subject to federal oversight over conditions and overcrowding. It has housed many high-profile defendants.
The jail remains an active detention facility and is not open to the public.
Southwest of the city — Gateway for Croker's private flights
Charlie Croker's world of corporate jets and business travel is linked to the airport, a symbol of Atlanta's economic ambition. The city's identity as a transportation hub underpins the real-estate boom that fueled his empire.
Hartsfield-Jackson grew from a 1925 airfield into the world's busiest passenger airport. It is a major engine for Atlanta's economy.
The airport serves tens of millions of passengers a year and is open to travelers. Its Plane Train and atrium areas are accessible to the public.
Visit: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (landmark)
Midtown Atlanta — Public green space of the city
Midtown Atlanta's open spaces and the neighborhoods around it form part of the social geography of Wolfe's city, contrasting the polished Buckhead elite with the city's more diverse residents. Characters from the city's different classes move through such spaces as Atlanta's racial and economic divides play out.
Piedmont Park was the site of the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition. It became a public park in 1904 and is Atlanta's best-known green space.
Piedmont Park is a large public park with trails, a lake, and views of the Midtown skyline. It hosts festivals and events year-round.
Visit: Piedmont Park (park)
More by Tom Wolfe: The Bonfire of the Vanities locations map · All Tom Wolfe books
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