"With a rare blend of naive and sophisticated candor the hero, Augie March, described as a "runner after good things, servant of love, embarker on schemes, recruit of sublime ideas and good-time Charlie" takes the reader with him on his "campaign after a worthwhile fate." A picaresque twentieth-century adventure tale with an amazingly real assortment of characters, a vast number of episodes ranging in location from Chicago to Mexico, to shipwreck...

The story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultramodern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys-radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic...