The Stand - Hardcover

The Stand is Stephen King's apocalyptic epic about a lab made superflu, the survivors it spares, and the two figures they choose between.

A security officer runs from a military lab carrying something he does not understand, and inside a few weeks almost everybody is gone. The harder question arrives afterwards: what do the survivors decide to build.

Two poles form. One gathers people toward a working community. The other gathers them toward appetite and spectacle. Everyone still alive has to walk toward one of them.

Good to know

This is the long version. The material cut from the original printing was put back, and the length is where readers split hardest. Some call it his best work, others say the middle sags.

From the publisher

#1 BESTSELLER - NOW A PARAMOUNT+ LIMITED SERIES - Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting--and eerily plausible--as when it was first published. One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years!

This edition includes all of the new and restored material first published in The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition. A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world's population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader.

Two emerge--Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious "Dark Man," who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them--and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.

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