Nelson Algren's most powerful and enduring work, The Man with the Golden Arm, offers a devastating portrait of the savage, subterranean world of gamblers, junkies, alcoholics, prostitutes, thieves, and degenerates. It remains unsurpassed as an authentic depiction of human depravity.

Only a master like Algren could create such a passionate and dramatic novel on the daring theme of a man's struggle against dope addiction. The novel tells the story of Frankie Machine, a card-dealing WWII veteran, who is caught in the act of slowly cutting his own heart into wafer-thin slices. For Frankie, a murder committed may be the least of his problems.

The literary critic Malcolm Cowley called it "Algren's defense of the individual," while Carl Sandburg wrote of its "strange midnight dignity." This literary tour de force suggests a defense of human dignity and a reason for hope, despite the challenges of drug addiction, poverty, and human failure.