A good old-fashion shoot-out in the American West of the frontier days serves as the springboard for this hyperkinetic adventure in which gunslingers, led by Kim Carson, fight for galactic freedom.The Place of Dead Roadsis the second novel in the trilogy withCities of the Red NightandThe Western Lands. William S. Burroughswas born in St. Louis in 1914. His best-known book is 1959'sNaked Lunch, which became the focus of a landmark 1962 Supreme Court decision that helped eliminate literary censorship in the United States. Described by Norman Mailer as one of America's few writers genuinely "possessed by genius," he died in 1997. His many other works includeJunkyandCities of the Red Night. In this typically bizarre and brillant novel, Burroughs gets things going with an old-fashioned shoot-out in the American West of frontier times. From here, readers embark on a hyperkinetic adventure wherein a group of gunslingers, led by one Kim Carson, must fight for galactic freedom.The Place of Dead Roadsis the second novel in the trilogy that begins withCities of the Red Night(and ends withThe Western Lands). "It's a comedy . . . A nightmare . . . Bosch-like visions, extraordinarily precise vivid visualizations . . . Outrageous ideas like mind bombs."Allen Ginsberg "Powerful . . . A raging torrent of words and images . . . Burroughs, like Daliacute;, first draws from his insanity, then selects with reason. And what a master of the mother tongue he issculpted sentences, poetic prose, riffs that make you gasp in amazement . . . More accessible and murkily poetic than ever."Los Angeles Times Book Review "One of the wildest rides into the Wild West, and other parts known and unknown, we will ever have."The Washington Post Book World "A moving personal saga as well as a record of revolutionary vision."Chicago Tribune Book World