David Gates

Peter Jernigan''s life is slipping out of control. His wife''s gone, he''s lost his job and he''s a stranger to his teenage son. Worse, his only relief from all this reality - alcohol - is less effective by the day. And when the medicine doesn''t work, you up the dose. And when that doesn''t work, what then? (Apart from upping the dose again anyway, because who knows?) Jernigan''s answer is to slowly turn his caustic wit on everyone around him - his wife Judith, his teenage son Danny, his vulnerable new girlfriend Martha and, eventually, himself - until the laughs have turned to mute horror. But while he''s busy burning every bridge back to the people who love him, Jernigan''s perverse charisma keeps us all in thrall to the bitter end. Shot through with gin and irony, Jernigan is a funny, scary, mesmerising portrait of a man walking off the edge with his eyes wide open - wisecracking all the way.

David Gates collects 21 examples of writing about a part of life that many writers prefer to ignore or make peripheral: the world of the nine-to-five, of going to the workplace every day in order to make a living. Here we have realtors, theme-park workers, newspaper reporters, office drones, carpenters, and elevator operators, in stories and novel excerpts by writers as diverse as William Burroughs, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Lynne Tillman, George Saunders, Joseph Heller, Toni Morrison, and Edith Wharton.

By July 1807, following his spectacular victories over Austria, Prussia and Russia, Napoleon dominated most of Europe. The only significant gap in his continental system was the Iberian Peninsula. He therefore begun a series of diplomatic and military moves aimed at forcing Spain and Portugal to toe the line, leading to a popular uprising against the French and the outbreak of war in May 1808.Napoleon considered the war in the Peninsula, which he ruefully called 'The Spanish Ulcer', so insignificant that he rarely bothered to bring to it his military genius, relying on his marshals instead, and simultaneously launching his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. Yet the war was to end with total defeat for the French. In late 1813 Wellington's army crossed the Pyrenees into the mainland of France.This is the first major military history of the war for half a century. Combining scholarship with a vivid narrative, it reveals a war of unexpected savagery, of carnage at times so great as to be comparable to the First World War. But it was also a guerilla war, fought on beautiful but difficult terrain, where problems of supply loomed large. The British Navy, dominant at sea after Trafalgar, was able to provide crucial support to the hard-pressed, ill-equipped and often outnumbered forces fighting the French.Dr Gates' history can claim to be the first to provide a serious assessment of the opposing generals and their troops, as well as analysing in detail the social and political background. The Peninsular war is particularly rich in varied and remarkable campaigns, and his book will fascinate all those who enjoy reading military history.

Peter Jernigan tiene poco más de cuarenta años, vive en un barrio residencial de Nueva Jersey con su hijo adolescente, Danny, y trabaja en una inmobiliaria neoyorquina. Inteligente pero con escaso éxito, Jernigan naufraga en una adocenada vida de la que no consiguen sacarlo ni sus adicciones ni su sarcasmo. Su estrafalaria manera de relacionarse con los demás y la reciente muerte de su mujer lo arrastran a una tortuosa decadencia. Parece que las cosas pueden empezar a cambiar cuando conoce a Martha Peretsky, la madre divorciada de la novia de su hijo, e inician una prometedora relación. Jernigan es la divertídisima historia de un hombre que dejándose llevar por sus peores cualidades consigue convertir su vida en un estrepitoso fracaso. Una desternillante disección del egoísmo, la indiferencia y la crueldad humanas.

Peter Jernigan tiene poco más de cuarenta años, vive en un barrio residencial de Nueva Jersey con su hijo adolescente, Danny, y trabaja en una inmobiliaria neoyorquina. Inteligente pero con escaso éxito, Jernigan naufraga en una adocenada vida de la que no consiguen sacarlo ni sus adicciones ni su sarcasmo. Su estrafalaria manera de relacionarse con los demas y la reciente muerte de su mujer lo arrastran a una tortuosa decadencia. Parece que las cosas pueden empezar a cambiar cuando conoce a Martha Peretsky, la madre divorciada de la novia de su hijo, e inician una prometedora relacion.Jernigan es la divertidisima historia de un hombre que dejandose llevar por sus peores cualidades consigue convertir su vida en un estrepitoso fracaso. La cautivadora voz de Peter Jernigan nos acompaña en su particular descenso a los infiernos, a la vez que ofrece una desternillante diseccion del egoismo, la indiferencia y la crueldad que se hallan en el fondo de cada uno de nosotros. Jernigan, publicada en 1991 y finalista del Premio Pulitzer, es la primera y mas aclamada novela de David Gates, y su protagonista se ha convertido en uno de los antiheroes clasicos de la literatura norteamericana reciente. David Gates revisa el estereotipo clasico del antiheroe, tan caro a la tradicion literaria de su pais, para dar una clase magistral de como construir una voz narrativa.Sergi Sanchez (El Periodico)Les presento al impresentable Peter Jernigan, un tipo al que seguramente no les gustaria conocer en persona, pero que disfrutaran enormemente sobre el papel de estas trepidantes 362 paginas. Philipp Engel (Que Leer)Un estupendo libro, un hallazgo que invita mas a la sonrisa sarcastica que a la carcajada grosera.Ricardo Menendez Salmon (La Nueva España)