Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage. Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never even met keep trying to kill him.

Hilarious and tragic, at the heart of Catch-22 is a savage indictment of twentieth-century madness, and a desire of the ordinary man to survive it.