This first volume in the Library of America Don DeLillo edition presents three indispensable novels from the 1980s, published here with new prefaces from the author. The Names (1982) was DeLillo's breakthrough novel, a book that, as he reflects here, spanned a "broader expanse" than his earlier novels. James Axton, a "risk analyst" tasked with assessing dangers for his corporate clients from terrorism and other forms of political upheaval, uncovers evidence of ritual murders committed by a cult obsessed with ancient languages. The investigations of these crimes yields a profound series of meditations on identity, disconnection, and the nature of language itself. Part campus satire, part midlife character study, and part fever dream of a hyperreality that has become uncannily familiar, the National Book Award-winning White Noise (1985) creates a terrifying yet wickedly funny portrait of a postmodern America that is still recognizably ours, a world where children chant brand names in their sleep, university professors "read nothing but cereal boxes," and "you are the sum of your data." Three years in the research and writing, Libra (1988) offers a magnificent counter-history of the JFK assassination and a nuanced portrait of the president's murderer. DeLillo has observed that "the novel, working within history, is also outside it, correcting, clearing up, finding balances and rhythms." The result is a revelatory new depiction of a defining event in twentieth-century history. Rounding out the volume are two hard-to-find essays directly related to the novels: "American Blood," the 1983 Rolling Stone article that was DeLillo's first effort to grapple with the JFK assassination and the welter of information and speculation the events of the killing and Oswald's own murder by Jack Ruby; and "Silhouette City," an assessment of extremist right-wing groups and the troubling presence of neo-Nazism in the United States. -- "This Library of America volume launches a definitive edition of a modern American master. For more than fifty years, in pathbreaking works of postmodern fiction, Don DeLillo has been uniquely attuned, in Diane Johnson's words, 'to the content, not to mention the speech rhythms, dangers, dreams, [and] fears' of modern life. Here, with new prefaces by the author, are three essential novels from the 1980s, DeLillo's breakthrough decade. Written in Greece and inspired by DeLillo's travels through the Middle East and India, The Names (1982) follows James Axton, a risk analyst tasked by his corporate clients to assess economic threats from terrorism and other forms of political upheaval. When Axton uncovers evidence of ritual murders committed by a cult obsessed with ancient languages, investigations lead deeper and deeper into a bewildering and disturbing world of shifting identities, disconnection, and unsettling violence. In White Noise (1985), a wickedly funny vision of American consumerism and the weirdness of modern domestic life frames an ominous tale of ecological catastrophe. Jack Gladney, a professor of Hitler Studies living in an imperfectly blended family in a middle-American college town, finds himself a temporary refugee when a Bhopal-like 'airborne toxic event' necessitates the town's evacuation. This eerie episode fuels the insistent fear of death felt by Gladney and his wife, who has secretly enlisted in the testing for Dylar, a drug purporting to cure the human dread of mortality. Part campus satire, part midlife character study, the novel is DeLillo's enduring depiction of a civilization whose banalities seem apocalyptic, and vice versa. The fruit of extensive research in the historical record, Libra (1988) fuses novelistic invention and factual detail in its sweeping account of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In DeLillo's virtuosic retelling the shadowy figure of Lee Harvey Oswald becomes a complicated figure depicted with subtlety and depth, even as the act that brought him onto the stage of history remains hauntingly uncertain. The novel's plausibility is unnerving, even for its author: 'as I reread parts of the novel now,' DeLillo writes in his new preface, 'I'm not always sure whether certain characters belong to history or fiction.' Rounding out the volume are two hard-to-find essays directly related to the novels: 'American Blood,' the 1983 Rolling Stone article that was DeLillo's first effort to grapple with the welter of speculation about the JFK assassination and Oswald's murder by Jack Ruby; and 'Silhouette City,' from 1989, a penetrating analysis of extremist right-wing groups and the troubling presence of neo-Nazism in the United States."--