Who cares about Underworld? I didn't go near it. Separating this classic from that tome was the best marketing move anyone's ever done. This book should be in the public domain anyway. Imagine taking a baseball game, exploding it into one of the world's greatest historical events as seen from various characters' points of view, and at the same time encapsulating the dawning of a new moment in world history. Every sentence is sharp and detailed, anticipating the next. And then when Thomson hits the home run, Delillo freeze frames each second like you're in a car crash, making sure you're aware of everything that's going on. It's one of the best books ever written.

Yes, if you've read Underworld then there's no need to buy this book, and yes, it's a cynical ploy to release this already published and republished story as a new hardcover. I'd be irritated with Delillo if this weren't one of the most magnificent things I've ever read. I also enjoy the cover. I'd never seen that photograph before and hence never understood the story's odd original title. Why Pafko, mentioned in the text only once or twice? But there he is, forever, watching the ball sail over his head and into Cotter Martin's hand. Like Nick Shay said, the ball is about losing, not winning. Buy this book and give it to someone who'd never pick up an 800 page book. Give it to a baseball fan.

...the fact that this great work has been published previously (first in Harper's back in 1992, then in altered form as the Prologue to Underworld in 1997) does not alter the fact that it is great. Pristine. Phrase-perfect. Sustained in tone. It speaks in your voice, American. Buy it for your old man who loves baseball but has no patience for this contemporary-lit mishegoss. Buy it for that girl you're trying to impress who loved White Noise but can't stand baseball. Buy it for the 12-year-old nephew you're trying to turn on to the glories of great fiction. Buy it. Oh yeah, and if you haven't actually read it yourself, do that too. It's the 50th anniversary of Bobby Thompson's homer, for chrissake.