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Slaughterhouse-Five

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.

Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters..." Slaughterhouse-Five (taken from the name of the building where the POWs were held) is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is 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 a unique poignancy--and humor.

Slaughterhouse-Five is one of  the world's great anti-war 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.

Unstuck in time, Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut´s shattered survivor of the Dresden bombing, relives his life over and over again under the gaze of aliens; he comes at last to some understanding of the human comedy.

Breakfast of Champions

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane." So reads the tombstone of downtrodden writer Kilgore Trout, but we have no doubt who's really talking: his alter ego Kurt Vonnegut. Health versus sickness, humanity versus inhumanity--both sets of ideas bounce through this challenging and funny book. As with the rest of Vonnegut's pure fantasy, it lacks the shimmering, fact-fueled rage that illuminates Slaughterhouse-Five. At the same time, that makes this book perhaps more enjoyable to read.

Breakfast of Champions is a slippery, lucid, bleakly humorous jaunt through (sick? inhumane?) America circa 1973, with Vonnegut acting as our Virgil-like companion. The book follows its main character, auto-dealing solid-citizen Dwayne Hoover, down into madness, a condition brought on by the work of the aforementioned Kilgore Trout. As Dwayne cracks, then crumbles, Breakfast of Champions coolly shows the effects his dementia has on the web of characters surrounding him. It's not much of a plot, but it's enough for Vonnegut to air unique opinions on America, sex, war, love, and all of his other pet topics--you know, the only ones that really count.

Breakfast Of Champions is vintage Vonnegut. One of his favorite characters, aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. The result is murderously funny satire as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

A Midwestern automobile salesman with a troubled marriage meets an illustrious writer in Vonnegut´s savage satire of middle America. Made into a 1998 Bruce Willis movie.

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (Scholastic Classics)

An American frigate, tracking down a ship-sinking monster, faces not a living creature but an incredible invention -- a fantastic submarine commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo. Suddenly a devastating explosion leaves just three survivors, who find themselves prisoners inside Nemo's death ship on an underwater odyssey around the world from the pearl-laden waters of Ceylon to the icy dangers of the South Pole . . .as Captain Nemo, one of the greatest villians ever created, takes his revenge on all society. More than a marvelously thrilling drama, this classic novel, written in 1870, foretells with uncanny accuracy the inventions and advanced technology of the twentieth century and has become a literary stepping-stone for generations of science fiction writers. From the Paperback edition.

The Sirens of Titan

The richest and most depraved man on Earth takes a wild space journey to distant worlds, learning about the purpose of human life along the way.

In Vonnegut's tale of the near future, a cold and malevolent universe is all that humanity can ever know.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (Unabridged Classics)

Mother Night

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”* with Cat’s Cradle in 1963. He is, as Graham Greene has declared, “one of the best living American writers.”

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.

*The New York Times

“A great artist.”—Cincinnati Enquirer

“Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer…a zany but moral mad scientist.”—Time

Welcome to the Monkey House

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

Journey to the Center of the Earth (Enriched Classic)

A classic of nineteenth-century French literature, this science fiction tale delves into the depths of the Earth, and by so doing, reveals the staggeringly long history of our planet.

THIS ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES:

Â¥ A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information

Â¥ A chronology of the author's life and work

Â¥ A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context

Â¥ An outline of key themes and plot points to guide the reader's own interpretations

Â¥ Detailed explanatory notes

Â¥ Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work

Â¥ Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction

Â¥ A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience

Player Piano

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. Paul’s rebellion is vintage Vonnegut–wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.

Vonnegut's first novel, an unforgiving portrait of an automated and totalitarian future, was published in 1952. A human revolt against the machines which control life was arranged by the machines themselves to prove the futility of such resistance.

Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle, one of Vonnegut's most entertaining novels, is filled with scientists and G-men and even ordinary folks caught up in the game. These assorted characters chase each other around in search of the world's most important and dangerous substance, a new form of ice that freezes at room temperature. At one time, this novel could probably be found on the bookshelf of every college kid in America; it's still a fabulous read and a great place to start if you're young enough to have missed the first Vonnegut craze.

Kurt Vonnegut sees the future in his 1963 novel Cat's Cradle, and not only is it scarier than we might imagine, it is comically much, much crazier. In brief, pungent chapters, he describes a world racing toward apocalypse, courtesy of a deadly discovery made by a brilliant scientist-a matter called "ice-nine"-that becomes the secret weapon of his three incredibly dysfunctional adult children. Along the way, the reader becomes acquainted with an outlawed religion called Bokononism, a Caribbean banana republic in turmoil, and a surreal cast of characters that help deliver mankind to the brink of a cataclysm. Vonnegut's madly amusing imagination is in full play here, and the novel is a triumph of contemporary satire.

Cat's Cradle travels from the home turf of Vonnegut's imagination, Ilium, N.Y. to a Caribbean banana republic where an illicit religion called Bokononism is practiced, as a sense of doom (in the form of ice-nine) overtakes mankind.