Book Description
A Cool Million (1934) subtitled "The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin", is a satiric Horatio Alger story set in the midst of the Depression and is written in a bracing, mock-heroic style that has lost none of its wit or power. The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931), West's first work, was described by one delighted critic as "a fantasy about some rather scatalogical adventures of the hero in the innards of the Trojan Horse."



About the Author
Nathanael West was only thirty-seven when he was killed in an automobile accident in 1940. But he achieved his brilliant satiric vision early on, and his depictions of the "grotesque" aspects of the American scene rival those of Poe, Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor. West's four works-the two published in this volume and the short novels Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust-firmly established him as one of the most interesting and distinctive of American writers.

FROM THE PUBLISHER