Don DeLillo Books in Order: Complete Bibliography & Best Starting Points
Don DeLillo's complete bibliography in order — from White Noise and Underworld to Libra and Falling Man. Best starting points and reading order for this postmodern American master.
Don DeLillo is the most important postmodern American novelist of the last half-century — the writer who has most completely examined the specific texture of American life in the age of mass media, nuclear terror, consumer culture, and the collapse of meaning. His fiction is cerebral and often prophetic: Mao II (1991) anticipated our thinking about terrorism and celebrity; Cosmopolis (2003) anticipated our thinking about finance and inequality; White Noise (1985) anticipated our thinking about the relationship between entertainment and death anxiety.
He is also, in White Noise particularly, very funny — a quality that his reputation for difficulty sometimes obscures.
Where to Start
White Noise (1985)
The best starting point and the most beloved of DeLillo’s novels. Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler Studies at a small Ohio college, and his wife Babette live with their blended family in a particular fog of anxiety — about death, about each other, about the chemical cloud (the ‘Airborne Toxic Event’) that forces their evacuation. DeLillo’s prose renders the specific texture of 1980s American consumer culture — the television, the supermarket, the brand names, the white noise of information — as both a symptom of death anxiety and a treatment for it.
The novel won the National Book Award and is the standard introduction to DeLillo’s work.
The Great Novels
Underworld (1997)
DeLillo’s masterpiece and one of the longest American novels of the twentieth century. The narrative moves backwards from 1992 to 1951, connected by the baseball used in Bobby Thomson’s 1951 home run — the ‘Shot Heard Round the World’ that won the Giants the pennant on the same day the Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb. DeLillo tracks this ball through decades of American history, connecting cold war paranoia, waste management, popular culture, and the specific way that the nuclear age shaped American consciousness.
The opening section — a 60-page account of the 1951 game, with Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, Toots Shor, and J. Edgar Hoover in the stands — is among the finest sustained passages in American fiction.
Libra (1988)
The most gripping of DeLillo’s novels — a fictionalized account of Lee Harvey Oswald from childhood to Dallas. DeLillo uses documented facts and his own fictional intelligence to construct the most persuasive available account of how Oswald became who he was and why he did what he did (or didn’t do — DeLillo maintains ambiguity about Oswald’s actual role throughout). The novel is simultaneously a historical novel, a conspiracy thriller, and a meditation on the way that history is made by the convergence of multiple uncoordinated intentions.
The Post-9/11 Novel
Falling Man (2007)
DeLillo’s account of the September 11 attacks and their aftermath — the most serious literary treatment of the event by a major American novelist. The novel follows Keith Neudecker, a survivor of the towers, and his wife Lianne and their son in the months after the attack, and alternates their story with brief chapters following one of the hijackers. DeLillo’s subject is the specific way that the attacks changed the texture of consciousness — what it means to live in a world where the ordinary day can suddenly end like that.
The Late Work
Mao II (1991)
A shorter, earlier novel about celebrity, terrorism, and the relationship between the writer and the crowd — the Mao and Warhol images of mass reproduction that open the novel set the theme. Bill Gray, a novelist who has lived in hiding for years, is drawn out of seclusion into the world of hostage negotiations and discovers that the terrorist now does what the novelist once did: capture the world’s attention. The novel anticipates the post-9/11 world with unsettling precision.
Complete Bibliography in Order
| Title | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Americana | 1971 | First novel; television culture |
| End Zone | 1972 | Football; nuclear war; very good |
| Great Jones Street | 1973 | Rock star in hiding |
| Ratner’s Star | 1976 | Mathematics; science; difficult |
| Players | 1977 | Terrorism; stock exchange |
| Running Dog | 1978 | Thriller; Hitler footage |
| The Names | 1982 | Language; terrorism; Greece |
| White Noise | 1985 | Essential; start here |
| Libra | 1988 | JFK assassination |
| Mao II | 1991 | Celebrity; terrorism |
| Underworld | 1997 | Masterpiece |
| The Body Artist | 2001 | Short; grief; time |
| Cosmopolis | 2003 | Finance; one day in Manhattan |
| Falling Man | 2007 | September 11 |
| Point Omega | 2010 | War; time |
| Zero K | 2016 | Cryonics; death |
| The Silence | 2020 | Novella; technology failure |
Reading Order Recommendations
New to DeLillo: White Noise → Libra → Mao II → Underworld.
Historical DeLillo: Libra → Underworld → Falling Man. The American century from 1951 to 2001.
Ambitious readers: White Noise → Libra → Underworld → Mao II.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best Don DeLillo novel to start with?
White Noise is the best starting point — it is DeLillo's most accessible and most beloved novel, the one that won the National Book Award and demonstrates his central concerns (media saturation, death anxiety, the specific texture of American consumer culture) in their most readable and frequently very funny form. Libra is the most gripping — a meticulously researched account of Lee Harvey Oswald's path to Dallas — and the best for readers who want historical fiction with DeLillo's particular intelligence. Underworld is his masterpiece but at 800+ pages requires a prior commitment to his work.
What is White Noise about?
White Noise (1985) follows Jack Gladney — professor of Hitler Studies at a small Ohio college — his wife Babette, and their blended family through a series of incidents including the 'Airborne Toxic Event,' a chemical cloud that forces their evacuation and confronts Jack directly with the death anxiety that saturates the novel. DeLillo's subject is the specific way that contemporary American culture generates noise (television, advertising, consumer products, information) that simultaneously distracts from and intensifies the terror of mortality. The novel is both very funny and genuinely disturbing.
What is Underworld about?
Underworld (1997) is DeLillo's most ambitious novel — 800 pages moving backwards from 1992 to 1951, centred on the fate of the ball hit by Bobby Thomson in the 1951 baseball game known as the 'Shot Heard Round the World.' The novel connects this ball to the cold war, to waste management, to popular culture, to the nuclear age — using it as a thread connecting decades of American history. DeLillo's subject is the underside of American culture: what is hidden, discarded, and suppressed. The famous opening section, at the Polo Grounds on October 3, 1951, is among the finest passages in American fiction.
What is Libra about?
Libra (1988) is DeLillo's fictionalized account of Lee Harvey Oswald — his childhood, his defection to the Soviet Union, his return to America, his connections to various conspirators, and his eventual convergence with the Kennedy assassination. DeLillo does not claim to know what happened; he claims to imagine what might have happened, using documented facts and his own fictional intelligence to construct the most plausible version of events available to a novelist. The result is simultaneously a historical novel, a conspiracy thriller, and a meditation on the nature of historical causality.
