This wide-ranging introduction to the short story tradition in the United States of America traces the genre from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century

A boy recalls his life with an elderly relative in rural Alabama in the 1930s and the lesson she taught him one Thanksgiving Day about dealing with a bully from

"The thing I like to do most in the world is talk," Capote once said, & talk he does in the more than two dozen interviews collected in this book.

Pugh explores Capote through a cinematic lens, skillfully weaving the most relevant elements of Capote's biography with insightful critical analysis of the film