DIVDIV“A great adventure . . . So outrageous and so real, one is left speechless.” —Chicago Sun Times/divDIV/divDIVIn Walker Percy’s future America, the country is on the brink of disaster. With citizens violently polarized along racial, political, and social lines, and a fifteen-year war still raging abroad, America is crumbling quickly into ruin. The country’s one remaining hope is Dr. Thomas More, whose “lapsometer” is capable of diagnosing the spiritual afflictions—anxiety, depression, alienation—driving everyone’s destructive and disastrous behavior./divDIV /divDIVBut such a potent machine has its pitfalls. As Dr. More soon learns, in the wrong hands, the powerful lapsometer could lead to open warfare, pushing America into anarchy at full-speed./div /div

Dr. Tom More has created a stethoscope of the human spirit. With it, he embarks on an unforgettable odyssey to cure mankind's spiritual flu. This novel confronts both the value of life and its susceptibility to chance and ruin.

Dr. Tom More has created a stethoscope of the human spirit. With it, he embarks on an unforgettable odyssey to cure mankind's spiritual flu. This novel confronts both the value of life and its susceptibility to chance and ruin.

A pair of profound dystopian novels from the “brilliantly breathtaking” New York Times–bestselling and National Book Award–winning author of The Moviegoer (The New York Times Book Review). Winner of the National Book Award for The Moviegoer, the “dazzlingly gifted” Southern philosophical author Walker Percy wrote two vividly imagined satirical novels of America’s future featuring deeply flawed psychiatrist and spiritual seeker Tom More (USA Today). Love in the Ruins is “a great adventure . . . so outrageous and so real, one is left speechless” (Chicago Sun-Times), and its sequel The Thanatos Syndrome “shimmers with intelligence and verve” (Newsday). Love in the Ruins: The great experiment of the American dream has failed. The United States is on the brink of catastrophe. Can an alcoholic, womanizing, lapsed-Catholic psychiatrist really save a society speeding toward inevitable collapse? Dr. Thomas More certainly thinks so. He has invented the lapsometer, a machine capable of diagnosing and curing the country’s spiritual afflictions. If used correctly, the lapsometer could make anxiety, depression, alienation, and racism things of the past. But in the wrong hands, it could rapidly propel the nation into chaos. “A comedy of love against a field of anarchy . . . Percy is easily one of the finest writers we have.” —The New York Times Book Review The Thanatos Syndrome: In Percy’s “ingenious” sequel, Dr. Tom More, fresh out of prison after getting caught selling uppers to truck drivers, returns home to Louisiana, determined to live a simpler life (The New York Times). But when everyone in town starts acting strangely—from losing their sexual inhibitions to speaking only in blunt, truncated sentences—More, with help from his cousin, epidemiologist Lucy Lipscomb, takes it upon himself to investigate. Together, they uncover a government conspiracy poised to rob its citizens of their selves, their free will, and ultimately their humanity. “The Thanatos Syndrome has the ambition and purposefulness to take on the world, to wrestle with its shortcomings, and to celebrate its glories.” —The Washington Post Book World

'[Harry Leslie Smith] is absolutely one of my heroes. Everyone should read this and be humbled.' Annie Lennox 'A deep love of humanity is what animates Smith. He is a hero of our times.' Newsweek 'His straight-from-the-heart delivery makes these events seem as clear and immediate as if they happened yesterday' Morning Star At 22, the war is over for RAF serviceman Harry Leslie Smith – the now 92-year-old activist and author of the acclaimed Harry's Last Stand – but the battle for love and hope rages on. Stationed in occupied Hamburg, a city physically and emotionally ripped apart by Allied bombing, and determined to escape the grinding poverty of his Yorkshire youth, Harry unexpectedly finds a reason to stay: a young German woman by the name of Friede. As their love develops, they must face both German suspicion and British disapproval of relations with 'the enemy'. Harry's ardent, straight-from-the-heart memoir brings to life a city reduced to rubble, populated with refugees, black marketeers, corrupt businessmen and cynical soldiers. Love Among Ruins: A memoir of life and love in Hamburg is a unique snapshot of a terrible period in Europe's history, and a passionate love letter to a city, to a woman, and to life itself.