This collection includes the letter the twenty-two-year old Vonnegut wrote home immediately upon being freed from the German POW camp; wry dispatches from Vonneguts years as a struggling writer; a letter to the CEO of Eagle Shirtmakers with a crackpot scheme to manufacture atomic bow ties; angry letters of protest to local school boards that tried to ban his work; letters to his children including advice like Dont let anybody tell you that smoking and boozing are bad for you. Here I am fifty-five years old, and I never felt better in my life; fantastically wise letters to writers such as Norman Mailer, Gunter Grass, and Bernard Malamud; and his characteristically modest response to being called a great literary figure: I am an American fadof a slightly higher order than the hula hoop.

Like Vonneguts books, his letters make you think, they make you outraged and they make you laugh. Written over a sixty-year period, and never published before, these letters are alive with the unique point of view that made Vonnegut one of the most original writers in American fiction.