A vicious and brilliant satire of human vanity from the author of the classic bestseller The Group Long out of print, Mary McCarthy's second novel is a bitingly funny satire set in the early years of the Cold War about a group of writers, editors, and intellectuals who retreat to rural New England to found a hilltop utopia. With this group loosely divided into two factions--purists, led by the libertarian editor Macdougal Macdermott, and the realists, skeptics led by the smug Will Taub--the situation is ripe not only for disaster but for comedy, as reality clashes with their dreams of a perfect society. Though written as a roman
