Game Theory and Postwar American Literature

Michael Wainwright is Associate Lecturer of English and Honorary Research Associate at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.

Preface
1. On Preliminary Matters
2. On Game Theory, the Art of Literature, and the Stag Hunt
3. On the Postwar Strategic Background, the Prisoner's Dilemma, and In Cold Blood
4. On Chicken in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
5. On Countercultural Chicken in Fahrenheit 451 and A Raisin in the Sun
6. On Coldblooded Chicken in In Cold Blood
7. On Called Bluff in Capote, Deadlock in Twain, and Bully in Faulkner
Works Cited
Index

"Michael Wainwright's impressive and ambitious study offers a persuasive re-reading of the political and cultural fabric of the early Cold War years in the United States. In bringing a new and sophisticated understanding of game theory to literary studies, this book is a timely refocusing of critical attention upon the patterns of rational decision-making in fictional representations of personal and societal conflict." - Brian Baker, Senior Lecturer in English, Lancaster University, UK, and author of Contemporary Masculinities in Fiction, Film and Television