shopping cart
Call us:  800-878-7323 HELP
McAfee SECURE helps keep you safe from identity theft, credit card fraud, spyware, spam, viruses and online scams.

You Might Also Like...

Running Dog Running Dog by Don Delillo

Trance: A Novel Trance: A Novel by Christopher Sorrentino



Related Aisles


Interviews | June 19, 2009

All posts by Dave Jim Lynch Makes Landscape Art... Out of Text

If Carl Hiaasen set one of his novels on a residential stretch of boundary line between British Columbia and Washington, or if Richard Russo's characters had relatives in the Pacific Northwest, the result might be something like Jim Lynch's Border Songs. Continue »


  1. $18.16 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

    Border Songs

    Jim Lynch

Libra

by Don Delillo

Libra Cover

ISBN13: 9780140156041
ISBN10: 0140156046
Condition: Standard
All Product Details
See More Like This

Only 1 left in stock at $7.95!

Staff Pick

The Kennedy assassination is front and center in Libra, Don DeLillo's fictionalized biography of Lee Harvey Oswald. There isn't a German loan word big enough to fully describe Delillo's talent. Using basically the same cast of characters that James Ellroy does in The Cold Six Thousand, DeLillo comes to eerily similar and equally frightening conclusions. Both put a fresh slant on a stale subject and both delve into the larger forces which collude to make history. Its great to have two of my favorite writers tackle the same subject.
Recommended by John, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.

A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche.

Review:

"Don DeLillo's cold and brilliant novel begins with thirteen-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald and his mother — that American Medea, Marguerite — watching television in the Bronx....DeLillo flies by night, and enters, an exorcist, into rooms and dreams. In each room, he finds a secret and a coincidence, a loneliness and a connection, even a kind of theology...But language is DeLillo's plastique. Out of gnarled speech, funny, vulgar, gnomic, he composes stunning cantatas for the damned to sing. Libra is as choral as it's cinematic." John Leonard

Review:

"It's his best novel, because it goes right to the source — to Dallas in November, 1963, the primal scene of American paranoia....DeLillo's portrait of Oswald is unexpectedly touching. It's what gives Libra the full heat of feeling....For the first time, DeLillo's work has the incendiary concentration of great fiction: his writing about Oswald is a long fuse that seems to lead straight to the heart of things." Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker

Review:

"....[T]ragic and dramatic as are the catastrophes of the great classical tragedies, but with an entirely American twist." Charles McGrath, The New York Time Books of the Century

Review:

"Libra is, in fact, another conspiracy theory, although considerably more literate and entertaining than most....Given {his} preoccupations, it was probably inevitable...that DeLillo would get around to the assassination, that nexus of paranoia." Paul Gray, Time

Review:

"One is dazzled by the virtuosity of Libra's construction, by the pungency and ellipses of the dialogue, and by the descriptive brilliance with which the lowlife characters materialize before one's eyes....Libra should be read for the boldness of its enterprise, its unflagging liveliness of surface and pacing, the engaging idiosyncrasy of its style, and, above all, for its vision of an outlaw element in American life devoted to the well-oiled mechanism of sudden death." Robert Towers, The New York Review of Books

Synopsis:

On November 22, 1963, in the streets of Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald's path intersected with the President John F. Kennedy's and the world witnessed the terrifying explosion of America's dreams. In Libra Don DeLillo applies his masterful imagination to Kennedy's assassination and crestes eerily convincing speculation about one of America's most compelling mysteries.

What Our Readers Are Saying

Add a comment for a chance to win!
Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Christopher D Himes, October 7, 2008 (view all comments by Christopher D Himes)
A thoroughly gripping historical fiction. Delillo has pumped this overdone subject with fresh characters and a plot that seems much more plausible than any others I've encountered. Even though you know how it's going to end it keeps you on the edge of your reading chair waiting to see how it will all come together.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(4 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)

Product Details

ISBN:
9780140156041
Author:
DeLillo, Don
Publisher:
Penguin Books
Author:
DeLillo, Don
Location:
New York, N.Y., U.S.A. :
Subject:
General
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
American fiction (fictional works by one author)
Subject:
Presidents
Subject:
Historical fiction
Subject:
Assassins
Subject:
Biographical fiction
Subject:
Assassins -- United States -- Fiction.
Subject:
Literary
Publication Date:
May 1991
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Yes
Pages:
480
Dimensions:
7.74x5.06x.85 in. .69 lbs.

Other books you might like

  1. $7.95 Used Trade Paper add to wish list
  2. $10.50 Used Trade Paper add to wish list
  3. $5.95 Used Trade Paper add to wish list

    Ceremony

    Leslie Marmon Silko
  4. $10.50 Used Trade Paper add to wish list

    Invisible Man

    Ralph Ellison
  5. $7.95 Used Trade Paper add to wish list

    The Known World

    Edward P. Jones
  6. $7.50 Used Trade Paper add to wish list

    Jesus' Son: Stories

    Denis Johnson
  • back to top

Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.