In this wild battering ram of a novel, which was originally published to vast controversy in 1965, Norman Mailer creates a character who might be a fictional precursor of the philosopher-killer he would later profile in <i>The Executioner's Song</i>. As Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero and former congressman who murders his wife in a fashionable New York City high-rise, runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen, Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty. One part Nietzsche, one part de Sade, and one part Charlie Parker, <i>An American Dream </i>grabs the reader by the throat and refuses to let go.<br> <br> <b>Praise for <i>An American Dream</i></b><br> <i> </i><br> "Perhaps the only serious New York novel since <i>The Great Gatsby</i>."<b> - Joan Didion, <i>National Review</i></b><br> <br> "A devil's encyclopedia of our secret visions and desires . . . the expression of a devastatingly alive and original creative mind."<b> - <i>Life</i></b><br> <i> </i><br> "A work of fierce concentration . . . perfectly, and often brilliantly, realistic [with] a pattern of remarkable imaginative coherence and intensity."<b> - <i>Harper's</i></b><br> <i> </i><br> "At once violent, educated, and cool . . . This is our history as Hawthorne might have written it."<b> - <i>Commentary</i></b><br> <b> </b><br> <b>Praise for Norman Mailer</b><br> <b> </b><br> "[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation."<b> - <i>The New York Times</i></b><br> <br> "A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent."<b> - <i>The New Yorker</i></b><br> <br> "Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure."<b> - <i>The Washington Post</i></b><br> <br> "A devastatingly alive and original creative mind."<b> - <i>Life</i></b><br> <br> "Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance."<b> - <i>The New York Review of Books</i></b><br> <br> "The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book."<b> - <i>Chicago Tribune</i></b><br> <br> "Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream."<b> - <i>The Cincinnati Post</i></b>
