"One of the astonishing things about looking back at old stories are their references to then-current political and social events", he said in the forums on his personal website.

"[3] In the same interview he stated that it’s the stable things in his life—his wife, children, same teaching post for thirty years, the same agent—that enable him to focus on his art.

[3] In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Boyle states, "My ambition is to make great art that is appealing to anyone who knows how to read.

T. C. Boyle describes their "Bad Boy" behavior: “we wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue and ether [...].

Boyle’s reference to war is as vivid as the lake, “so stripped of vegetation it looked as if the Air Force had strafed it.” [8] The mention of General Westmoreland's tactical errors in Khe Sahn equates to the main character's disastrous misguided offense of losing his car keys.

"[10] The short story is narrated by the husband, Mr. Trimpdie, a fisherman by trade, who has never been to college but reads science books and magazines.

The characters, Bayard Wemp, a successful business man who was used to luxury living, his highstrung neurotic wife, Fran, and their two adolescent children Melissa and Marcia, together are determined to survive an overpowering feeling of apocalyptic fever.

Mr. Wemp enters into a nefarious real estate deal to purchase thirty-five acres of land in the secluded area of Bounceback, Montana.

[16] T. C. Boyle writes, "Civilization itself--was on the brink of a catastrophe that would make the Dark Ages look like a Sunday-afternoon softball game."

The main character, Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, a "hard-nosed revolutionary communist worker," hopes to purchase a new "Good Quality Soviet Made Winter Coat."

The fine cloth coat with "a fur collar, like those in Paris," elevates Akaky in his workplace as everyone notices, the "party tool and office drudge" is now strutting like a "coryphee with the Bolshi."

The main characters in the stories are, according to Larry McCaffery, "typically lusty, exuberant dreamers whose wildly inflated ambitions lead them into a series of hilarious, often disastrous adventures.

"The Overcoat II", a reworking of Gogol’s classic short story, is set in the Soviet Union before the fall of communism.

In stories set in America, life is depicted as "a roller coaster ride, filled with peaks of exhilaration and excitement but also fraught with hidden dangers and potential embarrassments.

He is successful in capturing the imagination of the country, restoring the average working man’s faith and progress, giving America a cause to stand up and shout about but only to see his new moon “blamed for everything from causing rain in the Atacama to fomenting a new baby boom, corrupting morals, bestializing mankind, and finally to see the moon obliterated by a nuclear thunderbolt a month after the new president takes office.” [23] In "The New Moon Party" the narrator describes his dull aides as “a bunch of young Turks and electoral strong-arm men who wielded briefcase like swords and had political ambitions akin to Genghis Khan’s.”.