Underworld - Don DeLillo

Underworld

By Don DeLillo

  • Release Date: 2007-11-01
  • Genre: Classics
Score: 4
4
From 159 Ratings

Description

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
Winner of the Howell’s Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books

“A great American novel, a masterpiece, a thrilling page-turner.” —San Francisco Chronicle

*With a new preface by Don DeLillo on the 25th anniversary of publication*

Don DeLillo's mesmerizing novel was a major bestseller when it was published in 1997 and was the most widely reviewed novel of the year. It opens with a legendary baseball game played between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants in 1951. The home run that won the game was called the Shot Heard Round the World, and was shadowed by the terrifying news that on the same day, Russia tested its first hydrogen bomb. Underworld then tells the story of Klara Sax and Nick Shay, and of a half century of American life during the Cold War and beyond.

“A dazzling, phosphorescent work of art.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“This is a novel that draws together baseball, the Bomb, J. Edgar Hoover, waste disposal, drugs, gangs, Vietnam, fathers and sons, comic Lenny Bruce and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It also depicts passionate adultery, weapons testing, the care of aging mothers, the postwar Bronx, '60s civil rights demonstrations, advertising, graffiti artists at work, Catholic education, chess and murder. There's a viewing of a lost Eisenstein film, meditations on the Watts Tower, an evening at Truman Capote's Black & White Ball, a hot-air balloon ride, serial murders in Texas, a camping trip in the Southwest, a nun on the Internet, reflections on history, one hit (or possibly two) by the New York mob and an apparent miracle. As DeLillo says and proves, ‘Everything is connected in the end.’" Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

Underworld is an amazing performance, a novel that encompasses some five decades of history, both the hard, bright world of public events and the more subterranean world of private emotions. It is the story of one man, one family, but it is also the story of what happened to America in the second half of the 20th century.” —The New York Times

“Astonishing…A benchmark of twentieth-century fiction, Underworld is stunningly beautiful in its generous humanity, locating the true power of history not in tyranny, collective political movements or history books, but inside each of us.” —Greg Burkman, The Seattle Times

“It’s hard to imagine a way people might better understand American life in the second half of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first than by reading Don DeLillo. The scale of his inquiry is global and historic… His work is astounding, made of stealthy blessings… it proves to my generation of writers that fiction can still do anything it wants.” —Jennifer Egan, in her presentation of the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

Underworld is a page-turner and a masterwork, a sublime novel and a delight to read.” —Joan Mellen, The Baltimore Sun

Reviews

  • Worth the Work

    4
    By mfreel
    I stumbled across this book when I did a Google search for "Best Cold War Novels." I had worked my way through most of the John LeCarre lexicon and had been disappointed by some stock Berlin Wall potboilers. This came back in the search and I was intrigued by the extent to which it purported to capture the mood of the country in the years from the 50s to the 90s -- the Cold War years through which I had lived (although only as an infant for part of the 50s). It was hard work at first to grasp the non-linear, non-chronological plot and character development, and it could have easily been shorter. But it did not disappoint. The characters were fascinating and the mood of those years was perfectly captured. It was well worth the work and a fascinating portrayal of America in the second half of the 20th Century. Beautiful prose and moments of real greatness.
  • Fascinating book.

    5
    By Slayer Fan 911
    I really enjoyed reading this book.
  • 100 Words or Less (Plus some formatting comments)

    3
    By JRubino
    Déjà vu! That’s my reaction to Underworld, and unfortunately it’s not good. About 100 pages into the novel the slow burning realization finally hits home: I’ve read this before. Maybe a dozen years ago, I read this novel and do not remember any characters, plot, image, scene, or dialogue. Only when rereading certain sections did I begin to admit “Oh yeah, this sounds vaguely naggingly familiar.” Nothing specific. Simply a general feeling I’ve been bored by all this before. What a sad commentary on a book to remember nothing about it. Or is that a reflection on me? ==================================== There are some minor bugs that pop up within the ebook I downloaded. Examples: 1. “Pd” instead of “I’d” 2. misplaced hyphenization, like “move-ment” in the middle of a sentence 3. misplaced line breaks, truncating a sentence before the edge of the paragraph The reason for these mistakes is that each page was scanned from an original paper-printed copy. However, good this text scanning has become, it’s not perfect. Thus, whatever formatting the original book had, it is kept. And sometimes, it misrecognizes certain words. Yeah, it doesn’t really affect the novel, per se. But it’s sloppy. It's hard to ignore. It shows a laziness. A lack of quality. It rips you out of the story. And frankly, it’s unprofessional.