Download or read book Fabulous Small Jews written by Joseph Epstein and published by HMH. This book was released on 2004-07-06 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witty, “utterly compelling” short stories about Jewish men of a certain age, by the New York Times–bestselling author of Snobbery (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review). Set in Chicago and populated by characters ranging from lawyers and professors to scrap metal dealers, this collection of insightful and entertaining short fiction examines the crossroads and turning points of life, and the challenge of growing older and feeling suddenly adrift in a radically changed world. “Epstein’s narrators tend to be tough, hardworking, and solitary men who have survived poverty, the Holocaust, ruthless competition, and impossible domestic situations only to confront old age and a jittery new world that to their pragmatic eyes seems neurotic, flimsy, indulgent, and vacuous. Yet Epstein’s heroes—guys like salesman Moe Bernstein, dry-cleaner mogul Artie Glick, a bartender, a scamming ex-con, and a few soulful academics—do not despair. They maintain their sense of humor, they take chances, they open their hearts, and they find life sweeter than ever before. As rich in clever banter as in philosophic musings, Epstein’s funny and wise stories celebrate independence, the inner life, generosity of spirit, and rolling with the punches.” —Booklist “Epstein, always a graceful writer, also happens to possess a stand-up comic’s gift for punch lines.” —The New York Times Book Review

Download or read book Snobbery written by Joseph Epstein and published by HMH. This book was released on 2003-07-07 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Observations on the many ways we manage to look down on others, from “a writer who can make you laugh out loud on every third page” (The New York Times Book Review). Snobs are everywhere. At the gym, at work, at school, and sometimes even lurking in your own home. But how did we, as a culture, get this way? With dishy detail, Joseph Epstein skewers all manner of elitism as he examines how snobbery works, where it thrives, and the pitfalls and perils in thinking you’re better than anyone else. Offering arch observations on the new footholds of snobbery, including food, fashion, high-achieving children, schools, politics, being with-it—whatever “it” is—name-dropping, and much more, Epstein explores the shallows and depths of a concept that has become part of our everyday lives . . . for better or worse. “Smart, witty, perceptive . . . and almost always—in the best sense of the word—entertaining,” Snobbery provides the ultimate social commentary on arrogance in America (TheWashington Post Book World). It’s a book you shouldn’t be caught dead without.

Download or read book Envy written by Joseph Epstein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-28 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malice that cannot speak its name, cold-blooded but secret hostility, impotent desire, hidden rancor and spite--all cluster at the center of envy. Envy clouds thought, writes Joseph Epstein, clobbers generosity, precludes any hope of serenity, and ends in shriveling the heart. Of the seven deadly sins, he concludes, only envy is no fun at all.Writing in a conversational, erudite, self-deprecating style that wears its learning lightly, Epstein takes us on a stimulating tour of the many faces of envy. He considers what great thinkers--such as John Rawls, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche--have written about envy; distinguishes between envy, yearning, jealousy, resentment, and schadenfreude ("a hardy perennial in the weedy garden of sour emotions"); and catalogs the many things that are enviable, including wealth, beauty, power, talent, knowledge and wisdom, extraordinary good luck, and youth (or as the title of Epstein's chapter on youth has it, "The Young, God Damn Them"). He looks at resentment in academia, where envy is mixed with snobbery, stirred by impotence, and played out against a background of cosmic injustice; and he offers a brilliant reading of Othello as a play more driven by Iago's envy than Othello's jealousy. He reveals that envy has a strong touch of malice behind it--the envious want to destroy the happiness of others. He suggests that envy of the astonishing success of Jews in Germany and Austria may have lurked behind the virulent anti-Semitism of the Nazis.As he proved in his best-selling Snobbery, Joseph Epstein has an unmatched ability to highlight our failings in a way that is thoughtful, provocative, and entertaining. If envy is no fun, Epstein's Envy is truly a joy to read.

Download or read book Narcissus Leaves the Pool written by Joseph Epstein and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2007-07 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epstein's sixth collection of personal pieces winningly and brilliantly rounds off his 23-year tenure as editor of "The American Scholar". Among the topics covered are naps, Gershwin aging, name-dropping, long books, pet peeves, talent vs. genius, Anglophilia, and surgery--the head and the heart. Excerpted in "The New Yorker".

Download or read book Wind Sprints written by Joseph Epstein and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wind Sprints contains 142 short essays on a wide variety of subjects.

Download or read book Frozen in Time written by Joseph Epstein and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The estimable Joseph Epstein—essayist, past editor of The American Scholar, and recipient of the 2003 National Humanities Medal along with Hal Holbrook and John Updike—brings together twenty short stories in his first such collection since 2010. Most, though not all, of the stories are set in Epstein’s hometown of Chicago, but otherwise they have a variety of subjects: among the titles are "Dad's Gay," "The Casanova of LaSalle Street," "JDate," "Adultery," "Widow's Pique," "Race Relations," "The Man on Whom Everything Was Lost," "My Five Husbands," and "Second Family." Most are stories about family and friendships.

Download or read book The Book of Mischief written by Steve Stern and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the 25 years since [Stern] published his first book, younger Jewish writers have run with a similar shtick . . . But Stern was there first." —The Toronto Globe and Mail The Book of Mischief triumphantly showcases twenty-five years of outstanding work by one of our true masters of the short story. Steve Stern's stories take us from the unlikely old Jewish quarter of the Pinch in Memphis to a turn-of-thecentury immigrant community in New York; from the market towns of Eastern Europe to a down-at-the-heels Catskills resort. Along the way we meet a motley assortment of characters: Mendy Dreyfus, whose bungee jump goes uncannily awry; Elijah the prophet turned voyeur; and the misfit Zelik Rifkin, who discovers the tree of dreams. Perhaps it's no surprise that Kafka's cockroach also makes an appearance in these pages, animated as they are by instances of bewildering transformation. The earthbound take flight, the meek turn incendiary, the powerless find unwonted fame. Weaving his particular brand of mischief from the wondrous and the macabre, Stern transforms us all through the power of his brilliant imagination.

Download or read book Gallimaufry written by Joseph Epstein and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? Joseph Epstein would surely be at the top of anybody's list. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. Joseph Epstein's Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits is the fifth such volume from Axios Press and contains 58 essays. Subjects range from domestic life to current social trends to an appraisal of "contemporary nuttiness." It follows the much-acclaimed Essays in Biography, 2012; A Literary Education and Other Essays, 2014; Wind Sprints: Shorter Essays, 2016; and The Ideal of Culture: Essays, 2018.After reading Epstein, we see life with a fresh eye. We also see ourselves a little more clearly. This is what Plutarch intended: life teaching by example, but with a wry smile and such a sure hand that we hardly notice the instruction. It is just pure pleasure.

Download or read book Charm written by Joseph Epstein and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joseph Epstein takes on that most enchanting (and, alas, increasingly rare) of human gifts, charm. “Almost everyone will recognize when he or she is in the presence of charm,” he writes. “Charm is magic of a kind; it casts a spell. In the presence of charm the world seems lighter and lovelier. A charming person can cause you to forget your problems, at least temporarily, to hold the world’s dreariness at bay. Charm is a reminder that the world is filled with jolly prospects and delightful possibilities. Watching Fred Astaire dance, or listening to Blossom Dearie sing, or reading the poems of C.P. Cavafy, or merely looking at Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner, one recalls that the world can be a pretty damn fine place.”

Download or read book Friendship written by Joseph Epstein and published by HMH. This book was released on 2007-07-03 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The amusing and erudite anatomy of modern friendship, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Snobbery. Is it possible to have too many friends? Is your spouse supposed to be your best friend? How far should you go to help a friend in need? And how do you end a friendship that has run its course? In a “smart, delightfully literate, and sophisticated” anatomy of friendship in all its contemporary guises, Joseph Epstein uncovers the rich and surprising truths about our favored companions (Los Angeles Times). Friendship illuminates those complex, wonderful relationships without which we’d all be lost. “Reading [Epstein] is like spending an evening being flatteringly entertained by the most interesting guy at the party.” —The Seattle Times “A brilliant and outspoken commentator . . . Epstein’s graceful style and irrepressible wit provide unalloyed pleasure.” —Chicago Tribune “Brisk and delightful.” —The Wall Street Journal

Download or read book A Complicated Jew written by Hillel Halkin and published by Wicked Son. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hillel Halkin is widely admired for his works of literary criticism, biography, fiction, and nonfiction, as well as for his celebrated achievements as a translator. Born and raised in New York City, he has lived most of his life in Israel. His complex sensibility, deeply rooted in Jewish literature and history no less than in his own personal experience, illuminates everything it touches. In A Complicated Jew, Halkin assembles a selection of essays that form, if not a conventional memoir, a haunting and intimate record of a profoundly Jewish life that defies categorization. It is a banquet for the mind. “Hillel Halkin is a master storyteller and a brilliant cultural critic, and in A Complicated Jew he combines both talents to take his readers on an intellectual thrill ride through his encounters with Jewish thought, art, and life. I envy him his lifetime of adventures and am grateful to him for sharing them with all of us.” Dara Horn, novelist and author of Eternal Life and People Love Dead Jews “I have been reading Hillel Halkin for well on to half a century, always deriving pleasure from his stately prose, intellectual profit from his deep learning, and inspiration from his integrity. I am pleased to think of him as my contemporary.” Joseph Epstein, author of Life Sentences: Literary Essays, Narcissus Leaves the Pool and Fabulous Small Jews, and former editor of The American Scholar. “Hillel Halkin himself has always been even more interesting to me than his highly interesting subjects, and here he gives us full access to his adventurous mind, the dazzling range of his learning, and his passionate spirit. More than a collection of essays, this book charts the intellectual journey of one of our most original Jewish writers.” Ruth Wisse, Professor emeritus of Yiddish and Comparative Literature at Harvard University and author of If Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, Jews and Power, and No Joke: Making Jewish Humor. “Even when Hillel Halkin exasperates, there is no voice on the contemporary Jewish scene more intellectually alert or lucid. The work of a cultural critic of rare breadth, this keenly personal, fiercely argued volume is as trenchant of tour of Jewry’s dilemmas of the last half-century as any I know.” Steven J. Zipperstein, Professor of Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University and author of Imagining Russian Jewry and Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History.

Download or read book The Book of Aron written by Jim Shepard and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By National Book Award finalist Jim Shepard, a deeply affecting novel that will join the shortlist of classics about the Holocaust and the children whose lives were caught up in it. For readers of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, Kenneally's Schindler's List; Szpilman's The Pianist; Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces; Markus Zusack's The Book Thief; the works of Pimo Levi and Elie Weisel and Michael Chabon. When we meet Aron, he is a beguiling and perceptive and not always happy young boy coming into awareness of himself and his family's struggles. When soon they are driven from the countryside into Warsaw, their lives are changed forever. Aron and a group of boys and girls risk their lives scuttling around the ghetto, smuggling and trading things through the "quarantine walls" to keep their people alive, while they are hunted by blackmailers and Jewish and Polish and German police, as gradually things catastrophically worsen, people begin to disappear, and survival is threatened on all sides. Eventually, Aron comes to know Janusz Korczak, a Jewish-Polish doctor famous for his advocacy of children's rights, whose orphanage was relocated to the ghetto once the Nazis swept in. In the end, he and the children he takes care of, Aron among them, are brought to the station to be put on a train to Treblinka. The Book of Aron is a breathtaking novel of extraordinary craft, humanity, and masterful storytelling. Fearless, and devoid of sentimentality, it looks squarely into the face of unspeakable suffering, evil and lawlessness, revealing the persistence and strength of the human spirit despite all odds and the redemptive power of love. It is nothing less than a masterpiece.

Download or read book The Plot Against America written by Philip Roth and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2004-10-05 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Roth's bestselling alternate history—the chilling story of what happens to one family when America elects a charismatic, isolationist president—is soon to be an HBO limited series. In an extraordinary feat of narrative invention, Philip Roth imagines an alternate history where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to heroic aviator and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism. For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America–and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother. "A terrific political novel . . . Sinister, vivid, dreamlike . . . creepily plausible. . . You turn the pages, astonished and frightened.” — The New York Times Book Review

Download or read book Essays in Biography written by Joseph Epstein and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? Unquestionably Joseph Epstein. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. How easy it is today to forget the simple delight of reading for no intended purpose. Each of the 39 pieces in this book is a pure pleasure to read.

Download or read book The Smallest Crack written by Roberta Kagan and published by . This book was released on 2022-02-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1933 Berlin, GermanyWhen the price for life is dishonor dipped in blood, how much is too much?Eli Kaetzel and his beautiful but timid wife Rebecca suddenly find themselves in the gaping maws of Adolf Hitler's murderous rampage. Eli knows that their only chance, however slim, for survival may lie in the hands of Gretchen, a spirited Aryan girl.The friendship between Eli and Gretchen is as forbidden as it is dangerous and has been a tightly kept secret until now. For Eli, son of a respected Rebbe, the discovery would shame him and his family. For Gretchen, it could cost her her life.A story of a father's expectations of his son, friendship, arranged marriages, and forbidden passions.All on the eve of Adolf Hitler's rise to power.

Download or read book Number the Stars written by Lois Lowry and published by HarperCollins Children's Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Nazi-occupied Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen is called upon for a selfless act of bravery to help save her best friend from a terrible fate. Winner of the Newbery Medal, newly reissued in the Essential Modern Classics range. "They plan to arrest all the Danish Jews. They plan to take them away. And we have been told that they may come tonight." It is 1943 and life in Copenhagen is becoming complicated for Annemarie. There are food shortages and curfews, and soldiers on every corner. But it is even worse for her Jewish best friend, Ellen, as the Nazis continue their brutal campaign. With Ellen's life in danger, Annemarie must summon all her courage to help stage a daring escape. Inspired by true events of the Second World War, this gripping novel brings the past vividly to life for today's readers.

Download or read book The Wild Card written by Karl Shapiro and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Supported by a grant from the Eric Mathieu King Fund of the Academy of American Poets.