White Noise

Winner of the 1985 National Book Award-from the author of Zero K
A Penguin Classic
Winner of the National Book Award, White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultra­modern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys-radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings-pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.
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Don DeLillo published his first short story when he was twenty-three years old. He has since written more than a dozen novels, including White Noise (1985), which won the National Book Award. It was followed by Libra (1988), his novel about the assassination of President Kennedy, and by Mao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 1997 he published the bestselling Underworld, and in 1999 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of the freedom of the individual in society; he was the first American author to receive it. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Richard Powers (introduction) is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the Pulitzer Prize winner The Overstory and the National Book Award winner The Echo Maker. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, he lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.