In 2006, Charles Shields reached out to Kurt Vonnegut in a letter asking for his endorsement for a planned biography. The first response was no ("A most respectful demurring by me for the excellent writer Charles J. Shields, who offered to be my biographer"). Unwilling to take no for an answer, prop[...]

The novels of Kurt Vonnegut depict a profoundly absurd and distinctly postmodern world. But in this critical study, Robert Tally argues that Vonnegut himself is actually a modernist, who is less interested in indulging in the free play of signifiers than in attempting to construct a model that could[...]

Master storyteller and satirist Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most in-demand commencement speakers of his time. For each occasion, Vonnegut's words were unfailingly unique, insightful, and witty, and they stayed with audience members long after graduation. As edited by Dan Wakefield, this book reads [...]

Kurt Vonnegut cites Theodore Sturgeon as the inspiration for his character Kilgore Trout. This volume includes 12 stories from 1953, considered Sturgeon's golden era. Among them are such favorites as the title story, "The Silken-Swift," "A Way of Thinking," "The Dark Room," "The Clinic," and "The Wo[...]

A "New York Times" Notable BookAs seen in "People "and "USA Today" and featured on "CBS This Morning," CNN, and NPR"Stringer gives us the long view of New York's underbelly, born of pain but delivered with style and heart."--John Jiller, "The New York Times Book Review""Stringer's crisp detail, stra[...]

The definitive edition of Kurt Vonnegut s fiction concludes with three brilliantly satirical novels of the 1980s and 90s collected in one volume for the first time.Here are the final three novels of thevisionary master who defined a generation. "Bluebeard" (1987) isthe colorful history of a phenomen[...]

Captured by Germans after the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, soldier Kurt Vonnegut and other prisoners of war were taken to Dresden, Germany, where they were confined in a cement shed used for butchering livestock and called "Schlachthof-funf" or "Slaughterhouse-Five." Several weeks later, Ame[...]

Everything was perfectly swell.There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars.All diseases were conquered. So was old age.Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers.Never, never, never -- not even in medieval Holland nor old Japan -- had a garden [...]

In "Like Shaking Hands with God," two distinguished writers--separated by age, race, upbringing, and education, but sharing common goals and aspirations--talk about the place where the lives they lead meet the art they practice. That these two writers happened to be Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer ma[...]

When Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum he is converted into pure energy and only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result, he only gets home to Newport, Rhode Island, once every fifty-nine days and then only for[...]