Stephen Rojack is a decorated war hero; a former Congressman; and a certified public intellectual with his own television show. He is also married to the very rich; very beautiful; and utterly amoral Deborah Caughlin Kelly. But one night; in the prime of his existence; he hears the moon talking to him on the terrace of a fashionable New York high-rise; and it is urging him to kill himself. It is almost as a defense against that infinitely seductive voice that Rojack murders his wife.In this wild battering ram of a novel; which was originally published to vast controversy in 1965; Norman Mailer creates a character who might be a fictional precursor of the philosopher-killer he would later profile in The Executioner's Song. As Rojack runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen; Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty. Sensual; horrifying; and informed by a vision that is one part Nietzsche; one part de Sade; and one part Charlie Parker; An American Dream grabs the reader by the throat and refuses to let go.