About the book: year / One of the most famous humorists in world literature, O. Henry created a unique panorama of American life at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, conveyed grotesque situations contrasts and paradoxes of their era, which opened up space for people with business acumen, whom the game of chance either lifts to the pinnacle of success, or casts down to the very bottom of life. “You can avoid the deadly breath of the anchar, no matter what lovers of metaphors say; you can, if you're very lucky, black out a basilisk's eye; you can even dodge Cerberus and Argus; but no person, alive or dead, can escape the curious gaze of an onlooker. New York is a city of onlookers. There are, of course, many people in it who go their own way, amassing capital and looking neither to the right nor to the left, but there is also a whole tribe, very peculiar, consisting, like the Martians, solely of eyes and means of transportation…»