The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.
An American Tragedy is a fictionalized attempt to portray the real life of a hometown boy convicted of killing his girlfriend. The author was intrigued by this seemingly naive and innocent young man who went down a very dark path and why he did it. So he interviewed the boy in prison to get the first hand tale of the boy's life and turned it into this rather lengthy, but fantastically written account. It took me a long time to read the book. It was an assignment during my senior year of high school, but I never ended up actually finishing the book until the end of my first year of college. I kept at it though because it intrigued me, even then. I had to know what happened, and that was before I even started reading these books for my list. I would say that if you are up for a lengthy read, it is a good tale about how an All-American youth could be brought down to the deepest depths of despair.
