This collection of Vonneguts letters is the autobiography he never wrote from the letter he posted home upon being freed from a German POW camp, to notes of advice to his children: 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. Peppered with insights, one-liners and missives to the likes of Norman Mailer, Gunter Grass and Bernard Malamud, Vonnegut is funny, wise and modest. As he himself said: 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.