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While it was Saunders's Tenth of December that garnered all the attention, In Persuasion Nation is the book that is most representative of the Saunders experience. The stories show us a near future saturated in marketing and the tyranny of the brand, where scanners in the sidewalk attain consumer preferences and customize advertising accordingly, and focus groups are replaced by slaves acting in a never-ending series of commercials. But the chilling dystopia isn't what Saunders is after; his characters are imbued with a humanity and a warmth at odds with the starkness of his vision of where our society is headed (and increasingly, where it has ended up already). No one is penetrating to the heart of American life in the 21st century like Saunders is.