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Armageddon in Retrospect
by: Kurt Vonnegut

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.54
EAN: 9780399155086
ISBN: 0399155082
Label: Putnam Adult
Manufacturer: Putnam Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: April 01, 2008
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Sales Rank: 5933
Studio: Putnam Adult

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Unabridged CDs • 8 CDs, 10 hours

The first and only collection of unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut since his death—a fitting tribute to the author, and an essential contribution to the discussion of war, peace, and humanity’s tendency toward violence.

Amazon.com Review:
The first and only collection of unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut since his death--a fitting tribute to the author, and an essential contribution to the discussion of war, peace, and humanity's tendency toward violence.

Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve new and unpublished writings on war and peace. Imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor, the pieces range from a visceral nonfiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden during World War II--an essay that is as timely today as it was then--to a painfully funny short story about three Army privates and their fantasies of the perfect first meal upon returning home from war, to a darker, more poignant story about the impossibility of shielding our children from the temptations of violence. Also included are Vonnegut's last speech as well as an assortment of his artwork, and an introduction by the author's son, Mark Vonnegut. Armageddon in Retrospect says as much about the times in which we live as it does about the genius of the writer.

Read an Unreleased Kurt Vonnegut Story, 'Guns Before Butter'

'Guns Before Butter,' Kurt Vonnegut's story of hungry GIs held as prisoner of war in World War II in Dresden (a site of Vonnegut's best-known novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, and his own wartime imprisonment), was unpublished until its inclusion in Armageddon in Retrospect. Read the complete story here.

Kurt Vonnegut Sketchbook

Click through on the images below to see samples of the artwork included in Armageddon in Retrospect:

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Vonnegut didn't publish these and they shouldn't have been
The first two items in this compilation are fine. One is a Speech and the other a letter Vonnegut actually wrote home from Dresden way back when he was a prisoner of war. The rest of this book is a compilation of prepartion stories. Things Kurt Vonnegut wrote while reworking Dresden in his mind.

Spend your money on Mother Night and Slaughterhouse Five.

If you really want to see how an author begins struggling in earlier stories, if you're working on some academic paper on KV, then this might be interesting. There might be part of a PhD thesis in here someplace.

But for the fan, the person who used to look forward to a Vonnegut novel, this is nothing but picking the semi-prescious stones off of the bodies of the corpses in Dresden.

Rating:

- Interesting Insight into Vonnegut's Mind
Understandably, Vonnegut is highly anti-war/violence. He provides interesting points through his metaphorical stories. Vonnegut throws in several emotions, varying from humor to depression, most of which the stories are individually tailored to. Overall these were excellent stories and very thought provoking. I give 4 stars because the stories all seemed to offer the same repetitive message at the end of each, though individually most were simply wonderful.

Rating:

- Beating a dead horse
Let me start off by saying that I am a huge Kurt Vonnegut fan.
However, this posthumous volume leaves the reader wanting something more. I believe the reasons are twofold. First, this is not Vonnegut's best writing. Some of the short stories included are so trite in their style and theme that one hopes that they were novice pieces that Vonnegut wrote while he was maturing into the great writer he was. The second reason for this text's limited appeal is because all of the pieces deal with variations of the same theme. That in itself is not a bad thing, and the thematic links for this book are the issues of war and peace, which have great possibilities. However, a thematic collection only works if the entire collection is up to par. There are too many weak links in this text, and the total work suffers as a result.
Favorite pieces in the text are Kurt's letter home after being rescued from a POW camp and ... Read More

Rating:

- A Respectable Final Volume
This collection of previously unpublished works should provide satisfactory closure for Vonnegut fans and admirers. Fiction and nonfiction, dealing with war but more generally with violence and suffering, they are of great interest considering their author. The pieces vary in quality and in tone, from a grim description of the bombing of Dresden to the odd light humor of the title work. The introduction by the author's son is interesting, and the book is sprinkled with Vonnegut's own illustrations. I'd recommend this book for the substance of its more serious pieces, and to better understand the very important author Kurt Vonnegut.

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