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Thomas Berger

Thomas Berger’s debut novel of a young man tumultuously coming of age in postwar Germany
Carlo Reinhart, a young American army medic stationed in Germany, confronts a disturbing new world following the end of World War II. Living in Berlin, a city fractured into barricaded sectors by the occupying powers, Reinhart begins to drive himself mad with memories of the evils he has witnessed and questions about how the atrocities took place. When he meets an idealistic Jew named Nathan Schild, Reinhart’s turmoil grows more acute. Schild works for both the Americans and the Russians, and he becomes a flashpoint for Reinhart’s anguish over the world’s vast contradictions. When Schild’s escapades lead to a powerful turning point, Reinhart is forced to come to terms with life’s ambiguities as well as with his own evolving identity. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Thomas Berger including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

Open Road Media

Carlo Reinhart

Crazy in Berlin: A Novel

A bitterly comic novel of middle-aged angst and middle-class American life in the 1960s, by the acclaimed author of Little Big Man

 It is the late sixties in suburbia, and Carlo Reinhart’s life is a mess. He’s fat, broke, middle aged, and unemployed. His anarchist son hates him, and his wife has taken a younger lover and thrown Carlo out of the house. In fact, the only one who doesn’t consider him contemptible and ridiculous seems to be Carlo’s adoring, overweight daughter, who is almost as pathetic as he is. Even his affair with a twenty-two-year-old nymphomaniac is strangely unsatisfying.
 
 Then, just as he’s reaching his lowest point, the self-styled Ultimate Human Irrelevancy is offered a golden opportunity to grab a piece of the American Dream, thanks to the reappearance of his old school chum Bob Sweet. Bob, who has a gift for success, is inviting Reinhart to get in on the ground floor of his latest venture: cryonics. But while Carlo loves the taste of the good life that his friend has suddenly provided, he’s not quite certain whether Sweet wants him as a partner . . . or as a human popsicle.
 
 The third novel in Thomas Berger’s acclaimed Carlo Reinhart Series, Vital Parts is a stingingly hilarious swipe at twentieth-century culture and mores. Unrestrained and unapologetic, it is a tour de force from a master satirist that stands alongside Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, and the novels of Kurt Vonnegut as a trenchant and funny comment on American life.

Vital Parts: A Novel

Thomas Berger’s modern hero Carlo Reinhart is thrust into the strangest chapter of his life yet
Carlo Reinhart’s life has taken many turns. From his idealistic youth in Crazy in Berlin, to his entrance into adulthood in Reinhart in Love, through his uneasy tumble into middle age in Vital Parts, Reinhart has never lost his philosophical and even-minded disposition. Reinhart’s Women finds Reinhart divorced and living with his daughter, Winona, a successful model. His newest hobby is cooking, and he has become surprisingly accomplished for an amateur. But when he asks a woman over for a homemade lunch, Reinhart’s idyll is shattered. Adventures and misadventures conspire to put his nascent cooking skills to the test—and turn him into a postmodern celebrity. With Reinhart, Berger has created one of the great comic characters of the twentieth century—a man who beautifully represents, and parodies, his moment. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Thomas Berger including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.