Eric Packer is a twenty-eight-year-old multi-billionaire asset manager. We join him on what will become a particularly eventful April day in turn-of-the-twenty-first-century Manhattan. He''s on a personal odyssey, to get a haircut. Sitting in his stretch limousine as it moves across town, he finds the city at a virtual standstill because the President is visiting, a rapper''s funeral is proceeding, and a violent protest is being staged in Times Square by anti-globalist groups. Most worryingly, Eric''s bodyguards are concerned that he may be a target . . . An electrifying study in affectlessness, infused with deep cynicism and measured detachment; a harsh indictment of the life-denying tendencies of capitalism; as brutal a dissection of the American dream as Wolfe''s Bonfire or Ellis''s Psycho, Don DeLillo''s Cosmopolis is a caustic prophecy all too quickly realized.