The Story Archive

White Noise

Don DeLillo · 1985 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Contemporary

A professor who founded the field of Hitler studies at a small midwestern college lives comfortably with his fourth wife and their assembled children, shopping, watching television and avoiding the one subject that terrifies them both. A tank car ruptures upstate and a black chemical cloud drifts over the town, forcing an evacuation and a reading nobody will explain to him. Winner of the National Book Award, it remains the standard account of American consumer dread.

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