The Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of a salesman’s deferred American dream Ever since it was first performed in 1949, Death of a Salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity—and a play that compresses epic extremes of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of an American living room. "By common consent, this is one of the finest dramas in the whole range of the American theater." —Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times "So simple, central, and terrible that the run of playwrights would neither care nor dare to attempt it." —Time

A guide to reading "Death of a Salesman" with a critical and appreciative mind encouraging analysis of plot, style, form, and structure. Also includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list.

"I think this book is kind of malleable. I've never really wanted to put it away and be done with it forever -- the second I first 'finished' it, I wanted to dig back in and change everything around. So I'm looking forward to getting back into the text, and straightening and focusing and deleting. Most of all, I'm thrilled that Vintage will be letting me include all the cool chase scenes, previously censored." -- Dave Eggers The literary sensation of the year, a book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his seven-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read in paperback for decades to come. PAPERBACK EDITION -- 15% MORE STAGGERING - Eggers has written 15,000 additional words for the Vintage Canada edition, including an entirely new appendix.

Revised and updated to include Miller's late work and the key productions and criticism since the playwright's death in 2005.

Examines the individual author's entire body of work and on his/her single works of literature.

In 1983 Arthur Miller was invited to direct Death of a Salesman at the Beijing People's Theatre, with Chinese actors. While there, he kept a diary: this book tells the story of Miller's time in China, and of the paradoxes of directing in a Communist country a tragedy of American capitalism.

Part 1, "Materials," surveys editions, anthologies, and a large selection of published works on Miller. Part 2, "Approaches," has fourteen concise, helpful essays by experienced instructors focusing on stage directions and scenery; comparing Willy Loman with salesmen in plays by O'Neill and Mamet; and reading the play from psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, sociological, and feminist perspectives.