"Nobody, it seems, could write better than this. No one could have a clearer vision of the micro-circuitry of post-modern life" Evening Standard Ostensibly, DeLillo"s blackly comic second novel is about Gary Harkness, a football player and student at Logos College, west Texas. During a season of unprecedented success, Gary becomes increasingly fixated on the threat of nuclear war. Both frightened and fascinated by the prospect, he listens to his team-mates discussing match tactics in much the same terms as generals might contemplate global conflict. But as the terminologies of football and nuclear war -- the language of end zones -- become interchanged, the polysemous nature of words emerges, and DeLillo forces us to see beyond the sterile reality of substitution. This clever and playful novel is a timeless and topical study of human beings" obsession with conflict and confrontation. "Powerfully funny, oblique, testy, and playful, tearing along in dazzling cinematic spurts ...A masterful novel" Washington Post