Author Jean Shepherd reunites with his Indiana hometown. "Bending the ear of Flick, his childhood-buddy-turned-bartender, Shepherd recalls passionately his genuine Red Ryder BB gun, confesses adolescent failure in the arms of Junie Jo Prewitt, and relives a story of man against fish that not even Hemingway could rival. From pop art to the world's Fair, Shepherd's subjects speak with a unversal irony and are deeply and unabashedly grounded in American...

A Christmas story gathers together in one hilarious volume the gems of autobiographical humor that Jean Shepherd drew upon to create this enduring film. Here is young Ralphie Parker's shocking discovery that his decoder ring is really a device to promote Ovaltine; his mother and father's pitched battle over the fate of a lascivious leg lamp and, most crucially, Ralphie's unstoppable campaign to get Santa or anyone else to give him a Red Ryder carbine...