In a future time, a former President of the United States writes his memoirs, including an explanation of how, as President, he was forced to sell the original Louisiana Purchase lands to the King of Michigan.

Twelve previously unpublished writings on war and peace include such pieces as an essay on the destruction of Dresden, a story about the first-meal fantasies of three soldiers, and a meditation on the impossibility of shielding children from the temptations of violence.

Like Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was a Midwestern everyman steeped in the rhythms of American speech whose anger at the way things are was matched only by his love for the best that we can be. His cunningly relaxed delivery was so original, so finely calibrated, and so profound an articulation of the Sixties' spirit that many critics overlooked the moral seriousness behind the standup-comic craftsmanship. Capturing Vonnegut in pyrotechnic...

"Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he's given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition. McConnell has outfitted us for the...

A collection of speeches, letters, fiction, articles, and a musical comedy.

In Slaughterhouse-Five, WWII soldier Billy Pilgrim becomes "unstuck" in time, traveling from the firebombing of Dresden to his abduction by aliens, to his own death. In Cat's Cradle, a weapon capable of ending all life on earth falls into the hands of a Caribbean dictator at war with his people's happy-go-lucky religion, Bokononism. In Breakfast of Champions, Kilgore Trout is stalked by a car salesman who takes his outlandish tales for gospel truth....

A collection of 14 of Kurt Vonnegut's previously unpublished short stories sheds light on the writer's early development, displaying the wit and poignant observations that have made him such an enduring favorite.