William Saroyan

Fourteen-year-old Homer Macauley is determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger anyone has ever seen. His older brother has gone to war, leaving Homer to look after his widowed mother, his older sister and his 4-year-old brother, Ulysses. And so it is that as spring turns to summer - Un adattamento del romanzo "The Human Comedy" di William Saroyan, ambientato in una piccola cittadina della San Joaquin Valley in California, Ithaca, nel 1942. Il quattordicenne Homer Macauley è determinato a diventare il migliore e il più veloce messaggero del telegrafo in bicicletta che nessuno abbia mai visto. Suo fratello maggiore è andato in guerra, lasciando a Homer il compito di accudire la madre vedova, la sorella maggiore e il fratellino di 4 anni.

Adler discusses the ideas behind these plays and explores the world of the playwrights and the history—both familial and cultural—that informed their work. She illumines not only the dramatic essence of each play but its subtext as well, continually asking questions that deepen one’s understanding of the work and of the human spirit.

Since the series' inception in 1915, the annual volumes of The Best American Short Stories have launched literary careers, showcased the most compelling stories of each year, and confirmed for all time the significance of the short story in our national literature. Now THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY brings together the best: fifty-six extraordinary stories that represent a century's worth of unsurpassed achievements in this quintessentially American literary genre. John Updike worked with coeditor Katrina Kenison to choose the finest stories from the years since 1915. The result is "extraordinary… A one-volume literary history of this country's immeasurable pains and near-infinite hopes" (Boston Globe).