The world famous author of Rich Man, Poor Man and Beggarman, Thief has created one of his most memorable characters for one of his most unusual novels; a brilliantly written story of a man who needs to risk death to feel fully alive, a man who turns away from a comfortable, outwardly successful life toward dangerous pleasures. Michael Storr's joy comes from physical danger as a parachutist, a surfer, a hang glider, a free faller, a reckless skier. Oppressed by his life in New York City, he feels choked by his career as an executive in a high powered office as an executive in a high powered office, choked by the airless world of air conditioned towers. His own sanity depends on his finding a purer, simpler, more vigorous existence, and he sets out to search for one, even though he loses his wife in the process. He finds the physical excitement he craves but along with it developments he has not contempated. For some of the personal relationships in which he becomes entangled prove as threatening as the most dangerous of his sports. The Top of the hill promises to be not only another best seller but another of Irwin Shaw's landmarks. It is filled with scense that only a master novelist and lifelong athlete could give us scenes that rank with the most exciting he has ever written.