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Synopsis
Read by Rip Torn To be published on the first anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut's death in April 2007, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve new and unpublished writings on war and peace. Written with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor, the pieces range from a visceral nonfiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden during World War II-a piece that is as timely today as it was then-to a painfully funny story about three privates and their fantasies of the perfect first meal upon returning home from war; to a darker and more poignant story about the impossibility of shielding our children from the temptations of violence. This is a volume that says as much about the times in which we live as it does about the genius of the man who wrote it. Also included here is Vonnegut's last speech, as well as an assortment of his drawings, and an introduction by the author's son, Mark Vonnegut.
The Barnes & Noble Review
Once he got famous, the late Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) wasn't shy about sticking damn near every piece of writing he'd ever seen fit to put his name on between hard covers sooner or later, from dusty magazine stories to speeches and indignant letters. Especially in old age, he was also fond of repeating observations, jokes, and favorite quotations he apparently thought we hadn't gotten the first time. That's why longtime addicts know that a lot of 2005's bestselling A Man Without a Country -- his final book to see print in his lifetime -- deserved the title Kurt Vonnegut's Greatest Hits. So any intelligent buyer can probably guess going in that the previously unseen work now collected for publication as Armageddon in Retrospect on the first anniversary of Vonnegut's death is unlikely to be top-notch stuff.