The inimitable Thomas Pynchon has done it again. Hailed as aa major work of arta by "The Wall Street Journal," his first novel in almost ten years spans the era between the Chicago Worldas Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I and moves among locations across the globe (and to a few places not strictly speaking on the map at all). With a phantasmagoria of characters and a kaleidoscopic plot, "Against the Day" confronts a world of impending disaster, unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places and still manages to be hilarious, moving, profound, and so much more.