"No writer has more presciently or powerfully captured the American experience of the last half century than Don DeLillo. This journey through DeLillo's work is an enthusiastic and impressionistic companion to a singular body of American literature."
Ben Rhodes, author of The New York Times bestseller The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House (2018), Co-Host of Pod Save the World, and advisor to former President Barack Obama

"This is a dazzling work, unlike anything else I have read on DeLillo or indeed on contemporary American literature. It is ingenious, compelling, hilarious, and mischievous, philosophical and literary, scholarly and streetwise, imaginative and inspiring. I know of no other single-volume guide to DeLillo's work that is more comprehensive, original, lucid, and also pedagogically useful."
Nicholas Royle, Professor of English, University of Sussex, UK

"Michael Naas makes you remember why you love DeLillo. Don DeLillo, American Original mines DeLillo's entire body of work, searching out its paradoxical 'contraband' – that which is literally forbidden or unlawful – and reconfiguring it in terms of its contrabanded language – resistance as counterpoint. Such contrapuntal rules of harmony and pulse are the stuff of DeLillo's literary genius and embody his contrabando style – the unauthorized smuggling of incongruous elements into every aspect of the story. Naas's book is an entirely enjoyable read, frequently punctuated by DeLillo's own syncopated rhythms and resonant in its analysis of the author's language."
Jacqueline A. Zubeck, Associate Professor of English, College of Mount Saint Vincent, USA