Relentlessly fun to read.-Dave Eggers • A collection of fourteen previously unpublished short
stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction In this series of
perfectly rendered vignettes written just as he was starting to find his comic voice Kurt
Vonnegut paints a warm wise and funny portrait of life in post-World War II America-a world
where squabbling couples high school geniuses misfit office workers and small-town lotharios
struggle to adapt to changing technology moral ambiguity and unprecedented affluence. Here
are tales both cautionary and hopeful each brimming with Vonnegut's trademark humor and
profound humanism. A family learns the downside of confiding their deepest secrets into a
magical invention. A man finds himself in a Kafkaesque world of trouble after he runs afoul of
the shady underworld boss who calls the shots in an upstate New York town. A quack psychiatrist
turned murder counselor concocts a novel new outlet for his paranoid patients. While these
stories reflect the anxieties of the postwar era that Vonnegut was so adept at capturing-and
provide insight into the development of his early style-collectively they have a timeless
quality that makes them just as relevant today as when they were written. It's impossible to
imagine any of these pieces flowing from the pen of another writer each in its own way is
unmistakably quintessentially Vonnegut. Featuring a foreword by author and longtime Vonnegut
confidant Sidney Offit and illustrated with Vonnegut's characteristically insouciant line
drawings Look at the Birdie is an unexpected gift for readers who thought his unique voice had
been stilled forever-and serves as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who
has yet to experience his genius. Includes these never-before-published stories: Confido FUBAR
Shout About It from the Housetops Ed Luby's Key Club A Song for Selma Hall of Mirrors The Nice
Little People Hello Red Little Drops of Water The Petrified Ants The Honor of a Newsboy Look
at the Birdie King and Queen of the Universe The Good Explainer [Look at the Birdie] brings us
the late writer's young voice as he skewers-sometimes gently always lethally-post World War II
America.-The Boston Globe
