Written in the style of humorous fantasy 'A Cool Million' is an acerbic destruction of the American Dream. The story takes place in the Thirties, during the depression, but like all good literature it has an impact and perception which transcend period. West wrote this tale, subtitled 'The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin', shortly before starting work as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Judging by the evidence here his ideals were sufficiently well rooted to with-stand the pressures and temptations of 'Tinseltown'. The book was dedicated to the famous humorist S.J. Perelman, writer for the Marx Brothers. When you listen to this allegorical tale you will understand why!

Collection	Narrator	Length
American	Peter Joyce	4 hrs 10 mins

Media	Compact Disc	Audio Tape
Media Qty	4	3
Audio Format	CD-DA	Analogue
Book Code	AM-303CD	AM-303TA
ISBN	978 1 86015 049 4	978 1 86015 438 6
Price	£13.49	£11.99

Nathanael West (1903 –1940) was the pen name of US author, screenwriter, and satirist Nathan Wallenstein Weinstein. Nathanael West was born in New York City, the first child of German-speaking Russian Jewish parents from Lithuania who maintained an upper-middle class household in a Jewish neighbourhood on the Upper West Side. West displayed little ambition in academics, dropping out of high school and only gaining admission into Tufts University by forging his high school transcript. After being expelled from Tufts, West got into Brown University by appropriating the transcript of a fellow Tufts student who was also named Nathan Weinstein. Though West did little schoolwork at Brown, he read extensively. West barely finished college with a degree. He then went to Paris for three months, and it was at this point that he changed his name to Nathanael West. West's family, who had supported him thus far, ran into financial difficulties in the late 1920s

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