{"product_id":"9780743213615","title":"Slab Rat: A Novel","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn the pitch-perfect tradition of the very best of Nick Hornby, Martin Amis, and Christopher Buckley comes \u003ci\u003eSlab Rat,\u003c\/i\u003e a razor-sharp, highly comic novel of lethal ambition and office politics.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Zachary Arlen Post is an up-and-coming editor at \u003ci\u003eIt\u003c\/i\u003e magazine, one of the glossiest jewels in the glittery publishing crown of Versailles Publishing. The son of a well-regarded architect and an eccentric Palm Beach socialite, Zack was educated at an exclusive boarding school and has studied at Colgate, Berkeley, and Liverpool University. He is an excellent golfer and has a talent for translating Plautus from the original Latin. \u003cbr\u003e Or maybe not. \u003cbr\u003e He is really Allen Zachary Post, the son of a garment-center bookkeeper from Queens and a pool-supply salesman from Long Island. But for Zack, his background is too prosaic for a slightly lazy but very ambitious magazine editor who wants to move up at \u003ci\u003eIt.\u003c\/i\u003e Even though Zack has concocted a background that is more in keeping with the privileged world he wants to be a part of than the truth, his ascent up the masthead has stalled: Try though he might -- and maybe he's too lazy to try that hard -- he just cannot seem to get promoted. \u003cbr\u003e Enter Mark Larkin, a determined, Harvard-educated hire who understands how the corporate game is played. Mark says the right things, he lunches with the right people, and he pitches the right stories. A snob thriving in a world of snobs, he begins to get noticed, and, to Zack's dismay, is promoted quickly. \u003cbr\u003e Zack realizes that something must be done. Mark Larkin must be destroyed. \u003cbr\u003e To complicate his life further, Zack finds himself involved with two women. One is a cool (or is she just ice cold?) English beauty with a hyphenated last name and vague family connections to Winston Churchill. The other is an eager, sweet-natured intern whose father is the magazine's barracuda corporate counsel. Zack is torn between the style (and hyphen) of one and the good-natured substance of the other. \u003cbr\u003e In \u003ci\u003eSlab Rat,\u003c\/i\u003e Ted Heller uses the magazine industry as a laboratory in which to dissect human nature. He has written a biting, outrageous story of how the rats that battle for dominance amid New York's skyscrapers -- or \"slabs\" -- survive and triumph, and the price they must pay to win. Full of dark comedy and a ruthless satire of office life (and death), \u003ci\u003eSlab Rat\u003c\/i\u003e is a novel rich with the wicked pleasures of the heart.","brand":"Scribner","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47077039898864,"sku":"9780743213615","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780743213615_p0.jpg?v=1763638758","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780743213615","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}