Books by Kurt Vonnegut

A specialist in American studies edits this collection of essays on Vonnegut, which cover the novelist's various obsessions (apocalyptic visions, technological disasters, alienation) as well as the films based on his works and his relationship to other writers.

An anthology of previously uncollected short stories features twenty-four of the author's favorite tales, including "Any Reasonable Offer," "The Powder Blue Dragon," "Hal Irwin's Magic Lamp," and "Lover's Anonymous." Reprint.

For three years Andrew Carroll traveled throughout the United States and around the world to seek out the most powerful and unforgettable letters ever written during US wars.

Behind the Lines is the result of that extraordinary trip and represents the first audiobook of its kind: a dramatic, intimate, and revealing look at warfare as seen through the personal correspondence of US and foreign troops and civilians who have experienced major conflicts firsthand. From handwritten missives penned during the American Revolution to e-mails from Afghanistan and Iraq, Behind the Lines captures the full spectrum of emotions expressed in times of war.

Like Carroll's phenomenal national best seller War Letters, Behind the Lines is part of a larger effort to preserve correspondence that is riveting, insightful, and historically significant. This audiobook is also about Carroll's journey across the globe to visit the fields of battle where so many of these letters were written, meet with veterans and active duty troops who generously agreed to share their private correspondence, and speak with the family members who have lost their loved ones to combat.

Behind the Lines is a tribute to those who have fought for freedom, as well as a lasting reminder to present and future generations of the true nature of warfare and the sacrifices it demands of individuals, families, and entire nations.

An old man recounts his past to a voluptuous widow, revealing man's compulsion to create and destroy what he loves.

Kurt Vonnegut's seventh novel, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS (1973), begins like a primer on American history for children in which Columbus is a "white sea pirate," bent on rape and pillage, who leaves a legacy of hypocrisy and power-grabbing that was eagerly embraced by the Founding Fathers and generations of greedy Americans to come. The rest of the novel is essentially a brilliant, loony riff on that opening. Vonnegut resurrects his perennial character Kilgore Trout, the science-fiction writer, and sends him to the Festival of the Arts in the Midwest. There Trout encounters a mad Pontiac dealer named Dwayne Hoover who persists in seeing Trout's books as the literal truth, convinced that all humans except himself are robots. Vonnegut takes this wild conceit to astonishing heights in an irreverent satire of the American way of life that touches on icons ranging from the national anthem ("balderdash") to maple syrup ("candy made from the blood of trees"). Illustrated with Vonnegut's own crude but apt drawings, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS is a savagely irreverent send-up of everything Americans hold dear, including violence and schlock, full of aphorisms that run the gamut from the benign ("It is harder to be unhappy when you are eating") to the profound and unforgettable ("We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane"). Widely considered to be one of Vonnegut's best novels, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS endures as a freewheeling American classic.

Kurt Vonnegut's seventh novel, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS (1973), begins like a primer on American history for children in which Columbus is a "white sea pirate," bent on rape and pillage, who leaves a legacy of hypocrisy and power-grabbing that was eagerly embraced by the Founding Fathers and generations of greedy Americans to come. The rest of the novel is essentially a brilliant, loony riff on that opening. Vonnegut resurrects his perennial character Kilgore Trout, the science-fiction writer, and sends him to the Festival of the Arts in the Midwest. There Trout encounters a mad Pontiac dealer named Dwayne Hoover who persists in seeing Trout's books as the literal truth, convinced that all humans except himself are robots. Vonnegut takes this wild conceit to astonishing heights in an irreverent satire of the American way of life that touches on icons ranging from the national anthem ("balderdash") to maple syrup ("candy made from the blood of trees"). Illustrated with Vonnegut's own crude but apt drawings, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS is a savagely irreverent send-up of everything Americans hold dear, including violence and schlock, full of aphorisms that run the gamut from the benign ("It is harder to be unhappy when you are eating") to the profound and unforgettable ("We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane"). Widely considered to be one of Vonnegut's best novels, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS endures as a freewheeling American classic.

This early collection of short stories by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (most of which have appeared later in WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE and BAGOMBO SNUFF BOX) includes his first published work of fiction, "Reports on the Barnhouse Effect."

One of Vonneguts major works, this is an apocalyptic tale of the planet's ultimate fate, featuring a cast of unlikely heroes.

Hank Morgan, a nineteenth-century American who is accidentally returned to sixth-century England, is a powerful analysis of such issues as monarchy versus democracy and free will versus determinism, but it is also one of Twain's finest comic novels, still fresh and funny after more than 100 years.

Amid the horrors of a double murder and a city's annihilation by a neutron bomb, Rudy Waltz, a.k.a. Deadeye Dick, takes the reader on a zany search for absolution and happiness.

Most diseases can be separated from one's self ... schizophrenia is something we are." So begins Mark Vonnegut's depiction of his descent into, and eventual emergence from, mental illness. As a recent college graduate, self-avowed hippie, and son of a counterculture hero, Vonnegut begins to experience increasingly delusional thinking, suicidal thoughts, and physical incapacity. In February 1971 he is committed to a psychiatric hospital. The Eden Express, an ALA Notable Book first published over 25 years ago, is his honest, thoughtful, and moving account of the illness of schizophrenia. This edition features a new foreword by Kurt Vonnegut and a new preface by the author. "Required reading for those who want to understand insanity from the inside." - The New York Times

The author offers a collection of essays and speeches discussing the future of Earth, neoconservatism, Alcoholics Anonymous, liturgical music, and other topics, and includes autobiographical commentary on the past ten years of his own life.

In this revealing collection of essays, Vonnegut examines the issues and events (both personal and social) that shaped the last decade. Ranging from an intimate portrait of his family to a biting commentary of ex-son-in-law Geraldo Rivera to the 1945 firebombing of Dresden, Germany, where he was a POW, this book "offers a rare insight into an author who has customarily hidden his heart" (New York Times).

In this post-apocalyptic novel, a group of tourists is stranded on the Galapagos Islands, where they become the progenitors of a new race of humans with small brains, flippers for hands, and no interest in sex--the reverse of all the characteristics that the original humans had valued.

Observed by a ghost of the Vietnam War for one million years, the descendants of survivors of a cruise to the Galapagos Archipielago prove Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

Kurt Vonnegut puts on his reporter's vest for this book of interviews and profiles, but since all his subjects are dead, it's only with Dr. Jack Kevorkian's help that he manages to make contact with them. He hangs around heaven as long as he can, interviewing history's finest, including Shakespeare, John Brown, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Newton.

The hero if this absurdist tale is Eliot Rosewater, a millionaire firefighter who is one of Vonnegut's recurring characters. The novel also features Vonnegut's perennial alter ego, the science fiction writer Kilgore Trout.

GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER is a comic masterpiece. Eliot Rosewater, drunk, volunteer fireman, and President of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature...with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. The result is Vonneut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to.

A small, exclusive college in upstate New York is nestled along the frozen shores of Lake Mohiga . . . and directly across from a maximum-security prison. The two institutions manage to coexist peacefully, until 10,000 prisoners break out and head directly for the college. "Sharp-toothed satire . . . absurd humor".--San Francisco Chronicle.

Drawing on such unique sources as Thornton Wilder's unpublished letters, journals, and selections from the extensive annotations Wilder made years later in the margins of the book, Tappan Wilder's Afterword adds a special dimension to the reissue of this internationally acclaimed novel.

The Ides of March, first published in 1948, is a brilliant epistolary novel set in Julius Caesar's Rome. Thornton Wilder called it "a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic." Through vividly imagined letters and documents, Wilder brings to life a dramatic period of world history and one of history's most magnetic, elusive personalities.

In this inventive narrative, the Caesar of history becomes Caesar the human being. Wilder also resurrects the controversial figures surrounding Caesar -- Cleopatra, Catullus, Cicero, and others. All Rome comes crowding through these pages -- the Rome of villas and slums, beautiful women and brawling youths, spies and assassins.

A master of contemporary American literature, Vonnegut has authored 18 highly acclaimed books and dozens of short stories and essays. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentiary as Watergate's least known co-conspirator.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. himself reads from his most celebrated works: Breakfast of Champions, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, and three complete stories from Welcome to the Monkey House.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. himself reads from his most celebrated works: Breakfast of Champions, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, and three complete stories from Welcome to the Monkey House.

"A satirist, a keen observer of the follies of mankind and of the hypocrisies of its leaders"

-Isaac Asimov

Features photographs and transcripts of a seminar hosted by the authors on October 1, 1998 during which they spoke together about the process of writing, being a writer, and what it means to be human. Reprint.

Kurt Vonnegut's first new book in nearly 10 years is a collection of the essays he has published during that time, illustrated with his inimitable--and often hilarious--line drawings. Vonnegut writes on such topics as death, literature, the state of the American soul, the necessity for making art, and, of course, the administration of George W. Bush. The book's title comes from his often professed sense of shame at the American presence in Iraq. Many of these pieces were published in the magazine In These Times.

Kurt Vonnegut's first new book in nearly 10 years is a collection of the essays he has published during that time, illustrated with his inimitable--and often hilarious--line drawings. Vonnegut writes on such topics as death, literature, the state of the American soul, the necessity for making art, and, of course, the administration of George W. Bush. The book's title comes from his often professed sense of shame at the American presence in Iraq. Many of these pieces were published in the magazine In These Times.

As he awaits trail in Israeli for crimes against humanity, the fictional Howard W. Campbell (based loosely on William Joyce) narrates his story: an American in Germany on the onset of World War II, Campbell, a playwright and devoted husband, worked his way up through the Joseph Goebbels's propaganda machine, eventually becoming a Nazi propaganda broadcaster targeting Nazi-sympathizers in the United States. Secretly, he was also a U.S. spy, sending coded messages through his broadcasts--however, the damage he does with his fascist rhetoric threatens to do more damage than his espionage work. In the end, Campbell becomes a traitor in spite of himself. Told in Vonnegut's usual metafictional, and time-traversing style, MOTHER NIGHT proved to be a darker and more overtly political novel than his previous science-fiction work. It was later made into a feature film starring Nick Nolte.

Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and other aspects of his journey through life.

In February 2003, a remarkable event took place at the 92nd Street Y in New York, a celebration of the millionth copy sold of Howard Zinn's great A People's History of the United States. Zinn drew on the words of Americans, some famous, some little known, across the range of American history. These words were read by distinguished people in the arts: Alice Walker, Alfre Woodard, Kurt Vonnegut, James Earl Jones, Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei, Harris Yulin, Andre Gregory, and others.

From that event, this audio was born. It includes selections from Christopher Columbus, a Lowell mill worker, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Eugene Debs, a HUAC interrogation, Malcolm X, and a Gulf War resister, which are interwoven with commentary by Howard Zinn. This makes for exciting listening and is on its own an invaluable contribution to understanding American history.

Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a super computer and run completely by machines. His rebellion is a wildly funny, darkly satirical look at modern society.

Completed the day before his death in 1961, Rigadoon, the most compassionate of Celine's novels, explores the ravages of war and its aftermath. Often comic and always angry, the first-person autobiographical narrator, with his wife and their cat in tow, takes the reader with him on his flight from Paris to Denmark after finding himself on the losing side of World War II. The train rides that encompass the novel are filled with madness and mercy, as Celine, a physician, aids refugees while ignoring his own medical needs.

This sci-fi and fantasy master, the only author to have won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, International Fantasy Award, and World Fantasy Award. engages psychology, humanity, and stunning narrative in a volume of shorts that includes "The Silken-Swift," "A Way of Thinking," "The Dark Room," "The Clinic," and "The World Well Lost," as well as the title story. Included are 12 stories from 1953, considered Sturgeon's golden era. "Intelligent, humane, tantalizing stories, every one of which evokes the sense of wonder." - Carl Sagan

After crashing his spaceship, Winston Niles Rumfoord is transformed into a "wave phenomenon," a telepathic being who travels in an orbit from the sun to the constellation Betelgeuse, landing on Earth once every 59 days. Rumfoord drafts an earthling named Malachi Constant as the prophet of a new religion. Constant travel to distant planets in search of cosmic enlightenment, then returns to Earth with this message: "I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all."

This hilarious, wickedly irreverent farce presents an apocalyptic vision seen through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the United States).

Flying to a favorite uncle's funeral in Indianapolis, middle-aged Kurt Vonnegut daydreams of one-hundred-year-old Wilbur Oriole-11 Swain, pediatrician and past United States President, who wrote history's most popular child-rearing manual and sold the original Louisiana Purchase.

Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes 'unstuck in time' after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.

Slaughterhouse-Five is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is also as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch-22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it unique poignancy, and humor.

Launched in November, Dell's Kurt Vonnegut reissue program continues with one of the world's great anti-war books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

When the Creator of the universe came to Earth, It resolved to be born a male human infant, and this is what It saw when It opened Its eyes.

There's been a timequake. And everyone--even you--must live the decade between February 17, 1991 and February 17, 2001 over again. The trick is that we all have to do exactly the same things as we did the first time--minute by minute, hour by hour, year by year, betting on the wrong horse again, marrying the wrong person again. Why? You'll have to ask the old science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout. This was all his idea.

This work is a window not only into Vonnegut's mind...but into his heart--an indignant, outrageous, always witty, and deeply felt collection of reviews, essays, and speeches.

Essays, reviews, and speeches by the celebrated novelist candidly reveal his views on life, his works, and people.

Kurt Vonnegut is a master of contemporary American Literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him as a "true artist" (The New York Times) with Cat's Cradle in 1963. He is, as Graham Greene has declared, "one of the best living American writers".

Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.

These 25 short stories form Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (mostly published in the 1950s and '60s) feature the wildly imaginative and fiercely satiric style that made Vonnegut one of the most recognizable and popular voices of late 20th-century fiction. The title story features a dystopian future where overpopulation is rampant and the government has implemented a policy of Suicide Parlors and libido-reducing pills--a policy fought by the revolutionary Casanova called Billy the Poet.

This collection of Vonnegut's short masterpieces share his audacious sense of humor and extraordinary creative vision.