I read Fools Die for the first time when I was sixteen and it was chosen by me because of my desire to learn more about Mario Puzo's work aside from The Godfather. It changed me. Even after five years of college and university, I have yet to find a novel with characters which touched me the way Puzo's did in this novel. I actually miss them to this day and every year or two, I read it again, to remember those characters and the lessons they taught me. If someone was to ask me what it was that Mario Puzo is trying to say in all his novels, I would answer with this one sentence. Life is beautiful. That is it. Fools Die exemplifies that notion in the most profound way possible. Puzo says it over and over again but most people who I have encountered prefer to think of him as a novelist who is...