Following the astonishing success of his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey wrote what Charles Bowden calls "one of the few essential books written by an American in the last half century." This wild-spirited tale tells of a bitter strike that rages through a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers. Out of the Stamper family's rivalries and betrayals Ken Kesey has crafted a novel with the mythic impact of Greek tragedy.

    As a "human being", as the Cheyenne called their own, he won the name Little Big Man. He dressed in skins, feasted on dog, loved four wives and saw his people butchered by the horse soldiers of General Custer, the man he had sworn to kill.As a white man, Crabb hunted buffalo, tangled with Wyatt Earp, cheated Wild Bill Hickok and survived the Battle of Little Bighorn. Part-farcical, part-historical, the picaresque adventures of this witty, wily mythomaniac claimed the Wild West as the stuff of serious literature.

    for ISBN 037572706X.The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, Julian is widely regarded as one of Gore Vidal’s finest historical novels.Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshiping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign. A marvelously imaginative and insightful novel of classical antiquity, Julian captures the religious and political ferment of a desperate age and restores with blazing wit and vigor the legacy of an impassioned ruler.

    Lewis' The Discarded Image paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, as historical and cultural background to the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It describes the image discarded by later ages as the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe. This, Lewis' last book, was hailed as the final memorial to the work of a great scholar and teacher and a wise and noble mind.

    Five years of struggle to create a community ensue, in which part of the struggle is just to survive. This is the story of late 18th century life in an untamed country.

    Richard Brautigan was the author of ten novels, including a contemporary classic, Trout Fishing in America, nine volumes of poetry, and a collection of stories.Here are three Brautigan novels--A Confederate General from Big Sur, Dreaming of Babylon and The Hawkline Monster--reissues in a one-volume omnibus edition.

    Availing herself of a single character, Lispector transforms a banal situation—a woman at home, alone—into an amphitheater for philosophical investigations. The first-person narration jousts with language, playfully but forcefully examining the ambiguous nature of words, with results ranging from the profound to the pretentious: "Prehuman divine life is a life of singeing nowness" or "The world interdepended with me, and I am not understanding what I say, never! never again shall I understand what I say. For how will I be able to speak without the word lying for me?" These linguistic games frame existential and experiential crises that Lispector savors and overcomes. Although this idiosyncratic novel will not have wider appeal, those with academic or markedly erudite tastes should find much to savour.

    The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool hustler extraordinaire. A heist gone wrong gets Jack sent to reform school, from which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary confinement. In the meantime Billy has joined the middle class: married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress. But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, and they will meet again in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory end.

    More than a tale of possession, the novel probes disturbing depths of guilt, paranoia, and sexual obsession with an unsparing detachment.

    Picador 1988, the famous African Trilogy by the recently late Chinua Achebe, 'the man whose writing redefined Colonialism' Achebe was a towering literary figure whose work always repays the reader.

    He tells, as few great writers ever have, how he set his goals, how he discovered the excitement of using words, how the books he read influenced him, and how he learned to draw on his own experience.

    Tolkien's imagination and the breadth of his talent as a creator of fantastic fiction.

    Looking back not only at his own much younger self, but also at the other writers who shared Paris with him - James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald - he recalls the time when, poor, happy, and writing in cafes, he discovered his vocation. Written during the last years of Hemingway's life, his memoir is a lively and powerful reflection of his genius that scintillates with the romance of the city.

    But as night falls and the season begins to change, Neddy sinks from optimistic bliss to utter despair.

    The place is the Cabinet Room of the White House. An unexpected accident and the law of succession have just made Douglass Dilman the first black President of the United States.This is the theme of what was surely one of the most provocative novels of the 1960s. It takes the reader into the storm center of the presidency, where Dilman, until now an almost unknown senator, must bear the weight of three burdens: his office, his race, and his private life.From beginning to end, The Man is a novel of swift and tremendous drama, as President Dilman attempts to uphold his oath in the face of international crises, domestic dissension, violence, scandal, and ferocious hostility. Push comes to shove in a breathtaking climax, played out in the full glare of publicity, when the Senate of the United States meets for the first time in one hundred years to impeach the President.

    The profoundly moving, day-by-day recounting of her mother’s death “shows the power of compassion when it is allied with acute intelligence” (The Sunday Telegraph). Powerful, touching, and sometimes shocking, this is an end-of-life account that no reader is ever likely to forget.

    The narrator creates the story of this man -- or, rather, two stories, based on the two personae that he has imagined. One of these is named Enderlin; the other, Gantenbein.Originally published as A Wilderness of Mirrors.

    When first published, La Batarde earned Violette Leduc comparisons to Jean Genet for the frank depiction of her sexual escapades and immoral behavior. A confession that contains portraits of several famous French authors, this book is more than just a scintillating memoir. Like that of Henry Miller, Leduc's brilliant writing style and attention to language transform this autobiography into a work of art.Violette Leduc was born the illegitimate daughter of a servant girl and was encouraged to write by Maurice Sachs and Simone de Beauvoir. Her first novel, L'Asphyxie (In the Prison of Her Skin), was published by Camus for Gallimard and earned her praise from Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau, and Jean Genet. She went on to write eight more books, including Ravages, L'Affamee, and La Folie en tete (Mad in Pursuit), the second part of her literary autobiography.

    Having grown up near Big Sur, this book was particularly funny as Lee Mellon is still in residence there. Brautigan's descriptions of drugs, drinks, frogs & the commas of Ecclesiastes are all done in a straightforward style. A favorite paragraph: "He broke the seal on the bottle, unscrewed the cap & poured a big slug of whiskey into his mouth. He swallowed it down with a hairy gulp. Strange, for as I said before: he was bald." A great read. If there's one thing the world lacks, it's a good supply of well-written, funny-as-heck books. Luckily, aside from A Confederacy Of Dunces, we have this little gem. The characters are drunks, druggies, skanks, prostitutes & nutzoids. The pace is brisk, the imagry vivid. Most of it seemed to be part of my own life, but just where do you find weed that's so potent that 4 people smoking 5 joints stay high for well over 2 hours?If you want to spend a day or night having a good laugh over a great book, pick this one up. You'll laugh out loud. As Martha Stewart says, "it's a good thing".

    In the course of an afternoon, Hagar’s life unfolds: her childhood in a small prairie town, her Scottish immigrant father, the tumultuous relationship with her now-estranged husband, her sons, and their partners. Based on the novel by Margaret Laurence.

    This volume also includes four of London's acclaimed short stories.

    Pushkin's "novel in verse" has influenced Russian prose as well as poetry for more than a century. By turns brilliant, entertaining, romantic and serious, it traces the development of a young Petersburg dandy as he deals with life and love. Influeneced by Byron, Pushkin reveals the nature of his heroes through the emotional colorations found in their witty remarks, nature descriptions, and unexpected actions, all conveyed in stanzas of sonnet length (a form which became known as the Onegin Stanza), faithfully reproduced by Walter Arndt inthis Bollingen Prize translation. Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in imperial Russia during the 1820s, Pushkin's novel in verse follows the emotions and destiny of three men - Onegin the bored fop, Lensky the minor elegiast,& a stylized Pushkin himself - and the fates and affections of three women - Tatyana the provincial beauty, her sister Olga, & Pushkin's mercurial Muse. Engaging, full of suspense, and varied in tone, it also portrays a large cast of other characters & offers the reader many literary, philosophical, and autobiographical digressions, often in a highly satirical vein. Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's own favourite work, and it shows him attempting to transform himself from romantic poet into realistic novelist. This new translation seeks to retain both the literal sense and the poetic music of the original, & capture the poem's spontaneity & wit. The introduction examines several ways of reading the novel, and the text is richly annotated.Nabokov notes how translating rhymed poetry into unrhymed prose robs a poem of its 'bloom'. A huge work of scholarship, this enormous book illuminates Pushkin's great verse novel in obsessive detail & describes early 19th century Russia.Nabokov's commentary consists of line-by-line notes on Pushkin's poem.

    This updated sixth edition retains the structure and style of the popular previous editions, and includes two new, much-requested texts: Wulf and Eadwacer and Judith.The book consists of two parts. Part One comprises an introduction to the Old English language, including orthography and pronunciation, inflexions, word formation, an authoritative section on syntax. This is followed by an introduction to Anglo-Saxon studies, which discusses language, literature, history, archaeology, and ways of life. Sound changes are treated as they become relevant in understanding apparent irregularities in inflexion. Part Two contains verse texts, most of them complete, which fully reveal the range that Old English poetry offers in mood, intensity, humor, and natural observation. Full explanatory notes accompany all the texts, and a detailed glossary is provided.The new edition of this highly-acclaimed Guide will be welcomed by teachers and by anyone wanting to gain a greater understanding and enjoyment of the language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons.

    The late John Betjeman observed that 'this tenderly observant poet writes clearly, rhythmically, and thoughtfully about what all of us can understand'. Behind this modest description lies a poet who made greatness look, in Milton's prescription, 'simple, sensuous and passionate'.This collection, first published in 1967, contains many of his best-loved poems, including The Whitsun Weddings, An Arundel Tomb, Days, Mr Bleaney and MCMXIV.

    A plainspoken writer of consummate wryness, grace, and humor, the Egyptian author chronicles the lives of a polyglot Cairene upper crust, shortly after the fall of King Farouk, who are thoroughly unprepared to change their neo-feudal ways. This is the best book to date about post-Farouk Egypt.-Sylvie Drake, Los Angeles Times

    K. Narayan has produced his own versions of tales taken from the Ramayana and the Mahabarata. Carefully selecting those stories which include the strongest characters, and omitting the theological or social commentary that would have drawn out the telling, Narayan informs these fascinating myths with his urbane humor and graceful style."Mr. Narayan gives vitality and an original viewpoint to the most ancient of legends, lacing them with his own blend of satire, pertinent explanation and thoughtful commentary."—Santha Rama Rau, New York Times"Narayan's narrative style is swift, firm, graceful, and lucid . . . thoroughly knowledgeable, skillful, entertaining. One could hardly hope for more."—Rosanne Klass, Times Literary Supplement

    The protagonist of the work is Victor Crabbe, a teacher in a multiracial school in a squalid village, who moves upward in position as he and his wife maintain a steady decadent progress backward.

    Through a succession of wonderfully colourful characters, Anthony Burgess delineates the conflict and confusion arising from the almost enforced mingling of cultures.

    During the war, the world returns the favor. When his ship is blown up in the South Pacific, Ben is stripped of every shred of his personal identity—his face, his name, his fingerprints—and cast into the sea like a piece of wreckage. Rescued almost against his will, Ben must at last choose who and what he wants to be. But it is a choice he refuses to make until a dark-haired woman walks into his hospital room and says that he is her husband.MacDonald Harris has written a provocative novel, a wry narrative that moves with the exciting power of an adventure story. In scenes that range from waterfront bars and brothels to the rarefied atmosphere of the California gold coast, he creates men and women who vibrate with a life uniquely their own. His compelling story of a man's triumphant search for something or someone to care about evokes the humor, the sadness and the absurdity of a world that we all must somehow survive.

    Phrases like ‘Let me tell you a story,’ and ‘Now listen to this,’ and ‘My story is about,’ recur in his work.” This new book of sixteen stories is his fourth collection, following Gimpel the Fool, The Spinoza of Market Street and Short Friday. Many readers will rank it with Mr. Singer’s best work.The title story, an account of an old man who regularly visits an unconvincing medium on Central Park West, exemplifies what David Boroff calls Singer’s rare ability to “transmute metaphysical ideas into pure emotion.” “Getzel the Monkey” is the story of a moneylender who mimics the town’s richest man so successfully that he becomes like him to the point of tragedy. “Zeitl and Rickel,” the story of two women who wish to marry in the next world since they cannot do so in this one, contains the sentence, “Who can tell what goes on in another’s head?” The murderer who tells his story in “The Parrot” is driven to kill his mistress-wife because she takes out her unhappiness on their bird. “The Slaughterer” is a brilliant portrait of the progressive madness of a man persuaded against his nature to become a ritual slaughterer.“The Brooch” is the story of a thief who is able to work at his profession only as long as he can rely on his wife’s probity and uprightness. “The Warehouse” recounts the bureaucratic snarl-ups that plague souls in the after-life. In “The Plagiarist” a rabbi defrauded by a young disciple is asked to pray for his recovery and when the man dies he resigns to perform penance in exile. “The Lecture,” a story set in modern Montreal, reveals the reason behind an old lady’s interest in a visiting author. “The Needle” tells how a mother in search of a wife for her son devises an infallible test for prospective brides. “The Dead Fiddler” is the story of a dybbuk that talks, sings and curses in the body of a young girl. “Yanda” and “Henne Fire” are character studies of, respectively, a goodhearted Polish slavey who is fated to work for other people all her life, and a demon-like woman who causes trouble for people even after death. “The Letter Writer,” one of the major stories in the collection, relates the world of the unseen to the harsh realities of lonely old age and sickness in an alien modern city. This and the companion stories prove the truth of Miss Hughes’ assertion: “Singer is a master story-teller, one of the very few who can faithfully re-create a time forever past and render it meaningful to a troubled present.”

    Originally published in 1964, Lewis describes how, after Mussolini came close to destroying the Mafia, the U.S. Army returned them to power in 1944. Henceforth, they infiltrated every aspect of Sicilian life, corrupting landowners, the police, the judiciary, and even the church. In one of the most astonishing chapters, Lewis tells the story of how an eighty-year old priest led his monks on escapades of murder and extortion, frequently using the confessional box for transmitting threats. Lewis exposes its origins, its code of honor, its secrecy, and its brutality. The Honoured Society is the perfect companion for any traveler to Sicily, and a gripping armchair read.

    This new collection of sixteen stories reveals John Cheever's expertness employed with greater power to even more impressive effect than heretofore.

    Through the story of two brothers who grew up in patriotic, suburban Melbourne, George Johnston created an enduring exploration of two Australian myths - that of the man who loses his soul as he gains worldly success, and that of the tough, honest, Aussie battler.

    Eliot's critical writings. Tracing the rise of literary self-consciousness from the Elizabethan period to his own day, Eliot does not simply examine the relation of criticism to poetry, but invites us to "start with the supposition that we do not know what poetry is, or what it does or ought to do, or of what use it is; and try to find out, in examining the relation of poetry to criticism, what the use of both of them is." Eliot begins with the appearance of poetry criticism in the age of Dryden, when poetry became the province of an intellectual aristocracy rather than part of the mind and popular tradition of a whole people. Wordsworth and Coleridge, in their attempt to revolutionize the language of poetry at the end of the eighteenth century, made exaggerated claims for poetry and the poet, culminating in Shelley's assertion that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind." And, in the doubt and decaying moral definitions of the nineteenth century, Arnold transformed poetry into a surrogate for religion. By studying poetry and criticism in the context of its time, Eliot suggests that we can learn what is permanent about the nature of poetry, and makes a powerful case for both its autonomy and its pluralism in this century.

    In "The Frogs", written during the Peloponnesian War, Dionysus descends to the Underworld to bring back a poet who can help Athens in its darkest hour, and stages a great debate to help him decide between the traditional wisdom of Aeschylus and the brilliant modernity of Euripides. The clash of generations and values is also the object of Aristophanes' satire in "The Wasps", in which an old-fashioned father and his loose-living son come to blows and end up in court. And in "The Poet and the Women", Euripides, accused of misogyny persuades a relative to infiltrate an all-women festival to find out whether revenge is being plotted against him. In his introduction, David Barrett discusses the Athenian dramatic contests in which these plays first appeared, and conventions of Greek comedy - from its poetic language and the role of the Chorus to casting and costumes.

    Le Guin is renowned for her spare, elegant prose, rich characterization, and diverse worlds. "Semley's Necklace" is a short story originally published in the collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters.

    They represent the earliest work of William Melvin Kelley and provided a rich source of stories and characters who were to fill out his later novels. Spanning generations from the Deep South during Reconstruction to New York City in the 1960s, these insightful stories depict African American families—their struggles, their heartbreak, and their love.

    You may even learn something. Richard Armour, that madcap-and-gown satirist, goes his merry way from such Puritan authors as Michael Wigglesworth and Cotton Mather to such not-so-Puritan authors as O'Neill, Hemingway, and Faulkner. Sense and nonsense play a wild game of tag, having a field day in a field often approached to solemnly. The author gives his special kind of literate humor by combining word play, understatement, exaggeration, parody, free association, and irony. The survey course in American literature will never be the same.

    The daughter of one of the heroes of the Italian Resistance during World War II, she suffered her father’s assassination when she was seven. After an adolescence characterized by movement between cities and continents, her mother died, triggering a mental breakdown in the daughter. War Variations encompasses these intense life experiences, terrifying psychological realities that ultimately led to Rosselli’s suicide.

    The Swedish Academy lauded Ōe for his "poetic force [that] creates an imagined world where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."His most personal book, A Personal Matter, is the story of Bird, a frustrated intellectual in a failing marriage whose utopian dream is shattered when his wife gives birth to a brain-damaged child.

    At the heart of the stories lies the bitter paradox that the extraordinary creative power of man's imagination is matched only by his reckless instinct for destruction. Contents:- A Question Re-entry- The Drowned Giant- End-Game- The Illuminated Man- The Reptile Enclosure- The Delta at Sunset- The Terminal Beach- Deep End- The Volcano Dances- Billennium- The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon- The Lost LeonardoFront cover illustration by David Pelham

    Two brothers, Njoroge and Kamau, stand on a garbage heap and look into their futures: Njoroge is to attend school, while Kamau will train to be a carpenter. But this is Kenya, and the times are against them: In the forests, the Mau Mau is waging war against the white government, and the two brothers and their family need to decide where their loyalties lie. For the practical Kamau, the choice is simple, but for Njoroge the scholar, the dream of progress through learning is a hard one to give up.Weep Not, Child is Ngũgĩ’s first novel, published in 1964.

    It didn't make any sense at all. But Owlie just knew that he wanted Mystery. In a summer of surprises, Owlie learns a lot about horses and people--including the strange visitor on the island. And in the end, Owlie and Mystery teach the whole town an important lesson.Marjorie Reynolds has written a lively story for pre-teen-age readers about the growing up one boy does in a summer.

    If all this time, I have spoken of murder, sometimes half camouflaged, it’s because of that, that way of killing.”Murder is Danielle Collobert’s first novel. Originally published in 1964 by Éditions Gallimard while Collobert was living as a political exile in Italy, this prose work was written against the backdrop of the Algerian War. Uncompromising in its exposure of the calculated cruelty of the quotidian, Murder‘s accusations have photographic precision, inculpating instants of habitual violence.

    

    One day, however, he receives a letter from Mistress Mouse, inviting him to visit -- but she forgets to tell him where she lives. As Mister Mouse searches for her house, children will love guessing what's behind each door he knocks on! A spot of plush adds a delightful tactile quality to this beloved touch & feel board book.

    Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these troubled lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations. Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned by British courts in 1967, a decision that was reversed the following year with the help of a number of writers and critics including Anthony Burgess and Frank Kermode.Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928-2004) was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream was adapted into a film starring Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn, and directed by Darren Aronofsky.'Last Exit to Brooklyn will explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America, and still be eagerly read in 100 years'Allen Ginsberg'An urgent tickertape from hell'Spectator

    Eighty years of his life unfold through the observations of six narrators, each with a unique perspective on the man, his motivations, and the roots of his triumphs and failings.

    Contains three novels: * The Day of the Triffids * The Kraken Wakes * The Chrysalids

    Yet despite the wartime austerity and growing mood of unease, Adrian Bell and his wife went about their business in Suffolk, happily absorbed in the daily tasks of rearing children and struggling against enemies like weather and unyielding clay. Theirs was a way of life shaped by the seasonal rhythms of planting, cutting hay, apple picking, cider-making, the harvest festival, and the midwinter lifting of sugar beet. Apple Acre is an intimate portrait of a hamlet content to draw its strength from the land.

    Caligari, for which he received considerable critical acclaim as an innovator of the short story form. His style (fictional and popular figures in absurd situations, e.g., the Batman-inspired "The Joker's Greatest Triumph"), spawned a number of imitators and would help to define the next several decades of short fiction.

    And here, too, are his friends, Mrs. Worry-Wind Hedgehog, Haunted Beaver, Graybeard Tortoise, and many, many others.Their happy adventures in the forest, whether preparing for a picnic that never takes place, growing a very special and beautiful talking rose, or performing brave and heroic deeds of courage, will enchant the youngest listener.And who could ask for more than to have these lovable forest folk portrayed by Maurice Sendak, whose pictures are known and loved by thousands of children and adults.

    But when its cities crumbled to dust, Egypt's culture and the secrets of its hieroglyphic writings were also lost. The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt explains how archaeologists have pieced together their discoveries to slowly reveal the history of Egypt's people, its pharaohs, and its golden days.

    

    James Boswell--strong man, professional wrestler (his most heroic match is with the Angel of Death)-- is a con man, a gate crasher, and a moocher of epic talent. He is also the hero of one of the most original novel in years ( Oakland Tribune)--a man on the make for all the great men of his time--his logic being that if you can't be a lion, know a pride of them. Can he cheat his way out of mortality?

    

    

    Amado's theme is the life of the Bahian poor: not the whole of their lives, for we seldom glimpse them at the back-breaking work that must occupy some of their waking hours, but their leisure life. His scene is laid in cheap brothels, alleys, shanties on the beaches, and in those hidden shrines on the mountainsides where the priests and priestesses of Ogun or Oxala exact their rites...Novels aren't any worse for having no 'social message'; but it's strange to find one which handles so much social material without taking it somewhere, only moving it from place to place."John Wain, New York Review of Books, 5/4/1967

    Kennedy's assassination, in the run-up to the 1964 national election, Eugene Burdick's blockbuster political novel, The 480, foresaw the rise of social media and 21st century analytical data manipulation, the use of computer-generated voter profiles to shape - for better or for worse - the outcome of a major national election. Burdick - coauthor of The Ugly American and Fail-Safe - was a true socio-political visionary, ahead of his time by more than half a century.Many passages and scenes in The 480 bear eerie resemblances to the social divisiveness, political blockades, and moral and ethical failures that dominate today's news cycles about America's place in the world. This sweeping 13-hour unabridged audiobook is the story of the rise of a morally grounded and ethically driven businessman, John Thatch - a political neophyte - to the heights of party stardom through plots by devious party operatives who hold the keys (IBM punch cards) of voter data, and potentially salacious journals, in their greasy little hands.As noted in the original 1964 cover blurb, "This is the story of an extraordinary presidential campaign, of unwanted fame and public responsibility thrust upon a very private citizen, of love tested and courage found, and a new breed of political expert who believes the voters can be sold a candidate as readily as a housewife is sold a name-brand toothpaste."The story spans the globe-from India and Pakistan to the Philippines and across length and breadth of the United States - in its full spectrum of shady characters, questionable motives, foreign adventure, heart-wrenching romance, and behind-the-podium intrigue. At its 20th-century heart, The 480 asks, and-in light of American politics in the twenty-first century-answers the question, "Could the American voter be masterfully manipulated to select a presidential candidate not by rational consideration, but by hidden design?"