bThe definitive edition of a modern master continues with 2 mid-career masterpieces, published here with new prefaces from the authorb pThis second volume in the Library of America DeLillo edition collects two extraordinary novels he published in the 1990s, the peak of his career. pIn the PENFaulkner Award-winning bMao II b1991, the celebrated novelist Bill Gray has withdrawn into seclusion, his everyday affairs managed by a pair of assistants. And yet within the protective solitude he has built for himself he still finds himself struggling--with pills and with a novel he can't manage to complete. A visit from a Swedish photographer who specializes in author portraits spurs him to shake off his world-weariness, and soon the reclusive writer is embarked on an unlikely journey to help broker the release of a poet held hostage by terrorists in Beirut. iMao IIi, writes the critic Sven Birkerts, is DeLillo's strongest statement yet about the crisis of crises. Namely, that we are living in t