<p><b>In honour of the centennial of the birth of J.D. Salinger in 1919, Penguin reissues all four of his books in beautiful commemorative hardback editions - with artwork and text based on the very first Salinger editions published in the 1950s and 1960s.</b><br><br><i>''If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you''ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don''t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.''</i><br><br>The first of J. D. Salinger''s four books to be published, <i>The Catcher in the Rye</i> is one of the most widely read and beloved of all contemporary American novels.<br><br><b>''The handbook of the adolescent heart'' <i>The New Yorker</i></b></p>