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Book Details

Cat's Cradle

64.3% complete
1963
1986
1 time
See 127
1 - The Day the World Ended
2 - Nice, Nice, Very Nice
3 - Folly
4 - A Tentative Tangling of Tendrils
5 - Letter from a Pre-med
6 - Bug Fights
7 - The Illustrious Hoenikkers
8 - Newt's Thing with Zenka
9 - Vice-president in Charge of Volcanoes
10 - Secret Agent X-9
11 - Protein
12 - End of the World Delight
13 - The Jumping-off Place
14 - When Automobiles Had Cut-glass Vases
15 - Merry Christmas
16 - Back to Kindergarten
17 - The Girl Pool
18 - The Most Valuable Commodity on Earth
19 - No More Mud
20 - Ice-nine
21 - The Marines March On
22 - Member of the Yellow Press
23 - The Last Batch of Brownies
24 - What a Wampeter Is
25 - The Main Thing About Dr. Hoenikker
26 - What God Is
27 - Men from Mars
28 - Mayonnaise
29 - Gone, but Not Forgotten
30 - Only Sleeping
31 - Another Breed
32 - Dynomite Money
33 - An Ungrateful Man
34 - Vin-dit
35 - Hobby Shop
36 - Meow
37 - A Modern Major General
38 - Barracuda Capital of the World
39 - Fata Morgana
40 - House of Hope and Mercy
41 - A Karass Built for Two
42 - Bicycles for Afghanistan
43 - The Demonstrator
44 - Communist Sympathizers
45 - Why Americans Are Hated
46 - The Bokonist Method for Handling Caeser
47 - Dynamic Tension
48 - Just Like Saint Augustine
49 - A Fish Pitched Up by an Angry Sea
50 - A Nice Midget
51 - O.K., Mom
52 - No Pain
53 - The President of Fabri-Tek
54 - "Communists, Nazis, Royalists, Parachutists, and Draft Dodgers"
55 - Never Index Your Own Book
56 - A Self-supporting Squirrel Cage
57 - The Queasy Dream
58 - Tyranny with a Difference
59 - Fasten Your Seat Belts
60 - An Underprivileged Nation
61 - What a Corporal Was Worth
62 - Why Hazel Wasn't Scared
63 - Reverent and Free
64 - Peace and Plenty
65 - A Good Time to Come to San Lorenzo
66 - The Strongest Thing There Is
67 - Hy-u-o-ook-kuh!
68 - Hoon-year Mora-toorz
69 - A Bif Mosaic
70 - Tortured by Bokonon
71 - The Happiness of Being an American
72 - The Pissant Hilton
73 - Black Death
74 - Cat's Cradle
75 - Give My Regards to Albert Schweitzer
76 - Julian Castle Agrees with Newt that Everything in Meaningless
77 - Aspirin and Boko-maru
78 - Ring of Steel
79 - Why McCabe's Soul Grew Coarse
80 - The Waterfall Strainers
81 - A White Bride for the Son of a Pullman Porter
82 - Zah-mah-ki-bo
83 - Dr. Schilchter von Koenigswald Approaches the Break-even Point
84 - Blackout
85 - A Pack of Foma
86 - Two Little Jugs
87 - The Cut of My Jib
88 - Why Frank Couldn't Be President
89 - Duffle
90 - Only One Catch
91 - Mona
92 - On the Poet's Celebration of his First Boko-maru
93 - How I Almost Lost my Mona
94 - The Highest Mountain
95 - I See the Hook
96 - Bell, Book, and Chicken in a Hatbox
97 - The Stinking Christian
98 - Last Rites
99 - Dyot meet mat
100 - Down the Oubliette Goes Frank
101 - Like My Predecessors, I Outlaw Bokonon
102 - Enemies of Freedom
103 - A Medical Opinion on the Effects of a Writers' Strike
104 - Sulfathiazole
105 - Pain-killer
106 - What Bokononists Say When They Commit Suicide
107 - Feast Your Eyes!
108 - Frank Tells Us What to Do
109 - Frank Defends Himself
110 - The Fourteenth Book
111 - Time Out
112 - Newt's Mother's Reticule
113 - History
114 - When I Felt the Bullet Enter My Heart
115 - As It Happened
116 - The Grand Ah-whoom
117 - Sanctuary
118 - The Iron Maiden and the Oubliette
119 - Mona Thanks Me
120 - To Whom It May Concern
121 - I Am Slow to Answer
122 - The Swiss Family Robinson
123 - Of Mice and Men
124 - Frank's Ant Farm
125 - The Tasmanians
126 - Soft Pipes, Play On
127 - The End
Book Cover
Has a genre Has a year read Has a rating In my library 
315
No series
Copyright © 1963 by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
For Kenneth Littauer
a man of gallantry and taste.
Call me Jonah.
May contain spoilers
If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.
No comments on file
Synopsis not on file
Extract not on file

 

Added: 29-Dec-2002
Last Updated: 13-Dec-2019

Publications

 01-May-1978
Dell Publishing Company
In my libraryI read this editionOrder from amazon.comHas a cover imageBook Edition Cover
Date Issued:
Cir 01-May-1978
Cover Price:
$1.95
Pages*:
191
Read:
Once
Internal ID:
401
ISBN:
0-440-11149-8
ISBN-13:
978-0-440-11149-8
Printing:
47
Country:
United States
Language:
English
Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle deals with atomic scientists, ugly Americans, gorgeous sex queens, vengeful midgets, Caribbean dictators, undertakers, Hoosiers, a new way of making love, ice-nine, Bokononism, the end of the world... Ice-nine?  Bokononism?  The end of the world?  No one but Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., could have created this masterful mix of satire, fantasy and all-too-real realism.  An ultimate commentary on modern man and his madness, Cat's Cradle is one of the most brilliant and important novels of the decade.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

For many years Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., has been a hero of underground literature in America.  Only recently, however, has the general public become aware of his unique genius.  His is a far-out imagination which always winds up right on target, an irresistible humor with a superb cutting edge, a storytelling talent that makes reading a pleasure as well as a mind-jolting experience.  He is, as Graham Greene has declared, "one of he best living American writers."
Cover:
Book Cover
Notes and Comments:
I got this just after I read Breakfast of Champions.  I started wanting to read all the Vonnegut I could and this one I liked because of the title.  I remember doing Cat's Cradle with string as a kid.  Awesome story too.
 01-Oct-1998
Delta
Trade Paperback
Order from amazon.comHas a cover imageBook Edition Cover
Date Issued:
01-Oct-1998
Format:
Trade Paperback
Cover Price:
$11.95
Pages*:
287
Internal ID:
399
Publisher:
ISBN:
0-385-33348-X
ISBN-13:
978-0-385-33348-1
Country:
United States
Language:
English
Credits:
Gene Greif  - Cover Artist
"VONNEGUT IS GEORGE ORWELL, DR. CALIGARI AND FLASH GORDON COMPOUNDED INTO ONE WRITER... A ZANY BUT MORAL MAD SCIENTIST."  - Time

KURT VONNEGUT
is a master of contrmporary American literature.  His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him as "a true artist"* with Cat's Cradle in 1963.  He is, as Graham Green has declared, "one of the best living American writers."

CAT'S CRADLE
is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness.  An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.  A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat's Cradle is on of this century's most important works... and Vonnegut at his very best.

"A GREAT ARTIST."
- The Cincinnati Enquirer

* The New York Times
Cover:
Book Cover
Notes and Comments:

Related

Author(s)

Kurt Vonnegut Jr  
Birth: 11 Nov 1922 Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Death: 11 Apr 2007 New York, New York, USA

Notes:
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana.  He attended high school at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis at which he had his first experience in writing.  He was a writer and editor for the Shortridge Daily Echo, the first high school daily newspaper in the country.

After graduating in 1940, Vonnegut went Cornell University.  Vonnegut began his college career as a chemistry and biology major.  His older brother Bernard would later discover cloud seeding.  Vonnegut excelled as a columnist and editor for the Cornell Daily Sun when.  In 1943 when he was about to be asked to leave Cornell because of poor grades, he enlisting in the army.

On May 14, 1944, Kurt Vonnegut's mother committed suicide.  His father became a hermit content to be in his own little world.  He died on October 1, 1957.

Vonnegut became a prisoner of war in Germany on December 14, 1944, after being captured in the Battle of the Bulge.  He was sent to Dresden, an city that produced nothing war related and was supposedly off-limits to allied bombing.  On February 13, 1945 allied forces bombed Dresden and killed around 135,000 civilians.  Vonnegut and other POW's were able to survive by waiting in the cellars of their quarters.

On September 1, 1945, Vonnegut married Jane Cox.  He spent the next two years at the University of Chicago as a graduate student.  He worked for the Chicago City News Bureau while there.  His master's thesis was rejected and he moved to New York.  There he worked  as a publicist for General Electric.  On February 11, 1950, Vonnegut's published his first short story, "Report on the Barnhouse Effect."  And soon after he was able to quit his job and move his family to Massachusetts.

He published his first novel in 1952 entitled Player Piano.  By 1959, his 41-year-old sister died from cancer just hours after her husband had died in a train accident.  Vonnegut adopted three of Alice's four children.

Vonnegut published his sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, in 1968 detailing his time in Dresden from the viewpoint of Billy Pilgrim.

He published Breakfast of Champions in 1973 and Slapstick 1976, which was followed by Jailbird in 1979.

He was severely injured in a fire on January 30, 2000 in New York City.

Awards

1964World Science Fiction SocietyHugo Award - Best Novel Nominee
*
  • I try to maintain page numbers for audiobooks even though obviously there aren't any. I do this to keep track of pages read and I try to use the Kindle version page numbers for this.
  • Synopses marked with an asterisk (*) were generated by an AI. There aren't a lot since this is an iffy way to do it - AI seems to make stuff up.
  • When specific publication dates are unknown (ie prefixed with a "Cir"), I try to get the publication date that is closest to the specific printing that I can.
  • When listing chapters, I only list chapters relevant to the story. I will usually leave off Author Notes, Indices, Acknowledgements, etc unless they are relevant to the story or the book is non-fiction.
  • Page numbers on this site are for the end of the main story. I normally do not include appendices, extra material, and other miscellaneous stuff at the end of the book in the page count.






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