Underworld

Spanning fifty years and with a cast of more than a hundred characters, Don DeLillo's Underworld aims to tell a secret "underworld" history of America that covers everything from baseball and the New York City art scene to Frank Sinatra and serial killers. DeLillo’s prose has never been better; he writes dialogue that conveys so much in so few words, and there are astonishing sentences on virtually every page. While the book is front-loaded and occasionally drags over the later sections, in many ways it is the culmination of what DeLillo has tried to accomplish throughout his career — and the results are nothing less than stunning.