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The Amazon Store at MillionDollarPetPix.com ( In association with Amazon.com )Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)by: Joseph Heller  List Price: $27.00 Amazon.com's Price: $17.82 You Save: $9.18 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 813.54 EAN: 9780684865133 Edition: S&S Classic Ed ISBN: 0684865130 Label: Simon & Schuster Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 416 Publication Date: October 05, 1999 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Studio: Simon & Schuster Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: There was a time when reading Joseph Heller's classic satire on the murderous insanity of war was nothing less than a rite of passage. Echoes of Yossarian, the wise-ass bombardier who was too smart to die but not smart enough to find a way out of his predicament, could be heard throughout the counterculture. As a result, it's impossible not to consider Catch-22 to be something of a period piece. But 40 years on, the novel's undiminished strength is its looking-glass logic. Again and again, Heller's characters demonstrate that what is commonly held to be good, is bad; what is sensible, is nonsense. Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive." "Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is more important?" "To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead." "I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy." "The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on." Mirabile dictu, the book holds up post-Reagan, post-Gulf War. It's a good thing, too. As long as there's a military, that engine of lethal authority, Catch-22 will shine as a handbook for smart-alecky pacifists. It's an utterly serious and sad, but damn funny book. Product Description: Catch-22 is one of this century's greatest works of American literature. First published m 1961, Joseph Heller's profound and compelling novel has appeared on nearly every list of must read fiction. It is a classic in every sense of the word. Catch-22 took the war novel genre to a new level, shocking us with its clever and disturbing style. Set in a World War II American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of John Yossarian, who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. Yossarian is also trying to decode the meaning of Catch-22, a mysterious regulation that proves that insane people are really the sanest, while the supposedly sensible people are the true madmen. And this novel is full of madmen -- Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly m order to finish their tour; Milo Minderbinder, a dedicated entrepreneur who bombs his own airfield when the Germans offer him an extra 6 percent; Major Major Major, whose tragedy in life is that he resembles Henry Fonda; and Major -- de Coverley, whose face is so forbidding no one has dared ask his name. No novel before or since has matched Catch-22's intensity and brilliance in depicting the brutal insanity of war. Heller satirizes military bureaucracy with bitter, stinging humor, all the while telling the darkly comic story of Yossarian, a bombardier who refuses to die. Nearly forty years later, Yossarian lives. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - 25 words or lessEven sloth and debauchery lose their power. Virtue and sanity are what's left over when you've tired of all vice. Rating: - Lighthearted and comical, yet dark and meaningfulFirst and foremost, Catch-22 is written in a circular fashion, often ignoring chronological order to aid in the atmosphere of apparent logical irrationality. Many a reader has been turned away by this lack of sensical ordering. However strive on, just as a CSI detective starts with only half the picture, as you travel through this book, all becomes clear. There are two different appeals to reading Catch-22. The first is the lighthearted satire, mayhaps similar to what many of us have ... Read More Rating: - IncredibleI almost didn't include this book in my reading list - thank goodness I did in the end! Although set during a war, the theme is about survival, insanity and humanity. The language is disturbingly funny and can drive anyone crazy. The story is not told chronologically, which makes it a slightly difficult read, but the book relies largely on its characters and the way that Heller sets it out presents better pictures of each character. At the beginning of the book ... Read More Rating:  - Worth reading, but probably only onceBy wrapping his story in the context of war, Heller amplifies our tendency to treat others as a means to an end and to interpret our surroundings as intentionally hostile to our own objectives. Does Heller say more than this? Probably, after all, he introduces a lot of colorful characters, albeit most superficially. But it takes a lot of patience to wade through his oxymoronic prose and roundabout narrative style. At times I found this entertaining; at others I did not. It was probably ... Read More Rating: - Great Characters Living With DeathThe amazing CATCH-22 essentially has three overlapping narratives. One shows senior officers who are comically unsympathetic to the interests of their men. Some of these, such as Colonel Cathcart and General Peckem, are careerists who make decisions according to self-interest (or stupidity and self-interest). Others are incompetents, such as Major Major Major Major and General Sheiskopff, whose authority far surpasses their ability. To me, the careerist officers, while satirical, seemed as real as any modern ... Read More 
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