Download or read book The Five Books of Robert Moses written by Arthur Nersesian and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 1422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dramatic, playful, brutal, sweeping, and always entertaining reimagining of New York City history, presaging today's political tyranny. "A postmodern masterwork that outdoes Pynchon in eccentricity--and electricity, with all its dazzling prose." --Kirkus Reviews, Starred review "A masterwork of modern speculative adventure." --Rain Taxi Review of Books "Mr. Nersesian's work is a tale of extremes. The finished product weighs more than 4 pounds. If he stacked all his manuscript pages since he began the book back in 1993 it would stand 6 feet tall, a shade taller than himself, Mr. Nersesian says...Main characters include a fictionalized Robert Moses, the powerful public official who reshaped New York City and its environs, and his brother Paul, an electrical engineer. A difficult relationship between the two has dire consequences. There are also pop-culture favorites from the period, including psychedelic evangelist Timothy Leary; urbanologist Jane Jacobs, and poet Allen Ginsberg. All are intended to show readers how the value of culture erodes in an isolated world." --Wall Street Journal "Arthur Nersesian is the Bard of Lower East Side Manhattan...He knows every street corner, every bar, store, book stall, and even the famous 100-year-old Russian shvitz on 10th Street. Nobody does it better. Not Don DeLillo, not Richard Price, and not William Burroughs." --On the Seawall "A sprawling, engrossing Pentateuch of an alternate New York City...Nersesian's binge-worthy odyssey is a singularly wild ride." --Publishers Weekly "Nersesian is one of my favorite New York authors; this tome is one to lose yourself in." --Bob Odenkirk, actor, Breaking Bad After a domestic terrorist unleashes a dirty bomb in Manhattan in 1970, making the borough uninhabitable, FBI agent Uli Sarkisian finds himself in a world that is suddenly unrecognizable as the United States is faced with its greatest immigration crisis ever: finding housing for millions of its own citizens. The federal government hastily retrofits an abandoned military installation in the Nevada desert, vast in size. Despite the government's best intentions, as the military pulls out of "Rescue City," the residents are increasingly left to their own devices, and tribal warfare fuses with democracy, forming a frightening evolution of the two-party system: the gangocracy. Years after the Manhattan cleanup was supposed to have been finished, Uli travels through this bizarre new New York City, where he is forced to reckon with his past, while desperately trying to get out alive. The Five Books of (Robert) Moses alternates between the outrageous present of Rescue City and earlier in the twentieth century, detailing the events leading up to the destruction of Manhattan. We simultaneously follow legendary urban planner Robert Moses through his early years and are introduced to his equally ambitious older brother Paul, a brilliant electrical engineer whose jealousy toward Robert and anger at the devastation caused by the man's "urban renewal" projects lead to a dire outcome. Arthur Nersesian's most important work to date examines the political chaos of today's world through the lens of the past. Fictional versions of real historical figures populate the pages, from major politicians and downtown drag queens to notorious revolutionaries and obscure poets.
Download or read book The Five Books of Moses A Translation with Commentary written by Robert Alter and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-10-17 with total page 1115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A modern classic....Thrilling and constantly illuminating."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World Through a distinguished career of critical scholarship and translation, Robert Alter has equipped us to read the Hebrew Bible as a powerful, cohesive work of literature. In this landmark work, Alter's masterly translation and probing commentary combine to give contemporary readers the definitive edition of The Five Books. Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Translation and the Koret Jewish Book Award for Translation, a Newsweek Top 15 Book, Los Angeles Times Favorite Book, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book.
Download or read book The Swing Voter of Staten Island written by Arthur Nersesian and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2007-10-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Nersesian’s extravagantly imagined dystopia relies—as did those in Philip Roth’s Plot Against America and Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union—on an alternate, counterfactual history.”—The New York Times Book Review “Combining sci-fi space/time-warping, Unabomber-style political ranting and an overall air of goose-bump paranoia, this is one turbo-charged trip. . . . A sharp, strange read: Imagine William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick sharing a needle.”—Kirkus Reviews “Brilliant.”—Time Out New York Arthur Nersesian’s six previous novels (including The Fuck-Up, MTV/Pocket Books, which has sold over 100,000 copies) have focused on the tragicomedy of fin de siècle New York City. Here, in his boldest novel to date, Nersesian has broken through into a new landscape that at once fuses the real with the surreal, the psychological with the psychedelic. He lives in New York City.
Download or read book Essential Torah written by George Robinson and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2006-10-31 with total page 621 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether you are studying the Bible for the first time or you're simply curious about its history and contents, you will find everything you need in this "accessible, well-written handbook to Jewish belief as set forth in the Torah" (The Jerusalem Post). George Robinson, author of the acclaimed Essential Judaism, begins by recounting the various theories of the origins of the Torah and goes on to explain its importance as the core element in Jewish belief and practice. He discusses the basics of Jewish theology and Jewish history as they are derived from the Torah, and he outlines how the Dead Sea Scrolls and other archaeological discoveries have enhanced our understanding of the Bible. He introduces us to the vast literature of biblical commentary, chronicles the evolution of the Torah’s place in the synagogue service, offers an illuminating discussion of women and the Bible, and provides a study guide as a companion for individual or group Bible study. In the book’s centerpiece, Robinson summarizes all fifty-four portions that make up the Torah and gives us a brilliant distillation of two thousand years of biblical commentaries—from the rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud to medieval commentators such as Rashi, Maimonides, and ibn Ezra to contemporary scholars such as Nahum Sarna, Nechama Leibowitz, Robert Alter, and Everett Fox. This extraordinary volume—which includes a listing of the Torah reading cycles, a Bible time line, glossaries of terms and biblical commentators, and a bibliography—will stand as the essential sourcebook on the Torah for years to come.
Download or read book Robert Moses and the Modern City written by Hilary Ballon and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh look at the greatest builder in the history of New York City and one of its most controversial figures. “We are rebuilding New York, not dispersing and abandoning it”: Robert Moses saw himself on a rescue mission to save the city from obsolescence, decentralization, and decline. His vast building program aimed to modernize urban infrastructure, expand the public realm with extensive recreational facilities, remove blight, and make the city more livable for the middle class. This book offers a fresh look at the physical transformation of New York during Moses’s nearly forty-year reign over city building from 1934 to 1968.It is hard to imagine that anyone will ever have the same impact on New York as did Robert Moses. In his various roles in city and state government, he reshaped the fabric of the city, and his legacy continues to touch the lives of all New Yorkers. Revered for most of his life, he is now one of the most controversial figures in the city’s history. Robert Moses and the Modern City is the first major publication devoted to him since Robert Caro’s damning 1974 biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.In these pages eight short essays by leading scholars of urban history provide a revised perspective; stunning new photographs offer the first visual record of Moses’s far-reaching building program as it stands today; and a comprehensive catalog of his works is illustrated with a wealth of archival records: photographs of buildings, neighborhoods, and landscapes, of parks, pools, and playgrounds, of demolished neighborhoods and replacement housing and urban renewal projects, of bridges and highways; renderings of rejected designs and controversial projects that were defeated; and views of spectacular models that have not been seen since Moses made them for promotional purposes.Robert Moses and the Modern City captures research undertaken in the last three decades and will stimulate a new round of debate.
Download or read book The Power Broker written by Robert A. Caro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2024-09-16 with total page 1345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man’s incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York. One of the Modern Library’s hundred greatest books of the twentieth century, Robert Caro's monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree the way in which politics really happens—the way things really get done in America's City Halls and Statehouses—and brings to light a bonanza of vital information about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the genesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. But The Power Broker is first and foremost a brilliant multidimensional portrait of a man—an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient to shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of lives. We see how Moses began: the handsome, intellectual young heir to the world of Our Crowd, an idealist. How, rebuffed by the entrenched political establishment, he fought for the power to accomplish his ideals. How he first created a miraculous flowering of parks and parkways, playlands and beaches—and then ultimately brought down on the city the smog-choked aridity of our urban landscape, the endless miles of (never sufficient) highway, the hopeless sprawl of Long Island, the massive failures of public housing, and countless other barriers to humane living. How, inevitably, the accumulation of power became an end in itself. Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He was held in fear—his dossiers could disgorge the dark secret of anyone who opposed him. He was, he claimed, above politics, above deals; and through decade after decade, the newspapers and the public believed. Meanwhile, he was developing his public authorities into a fourth branch of government known as "Triborough"—a government whose records were closed to the public, whose policies and plans were decided not by voters or elected officials but solely by Moses—an immense economic force directing pressure on labor unions, on banks, on all the city's political and economic institutions, and on the press, and on the Church. He doled out millions of dollars' worth of legal fees, insurance commissions, lucrative contracts on the basis of who could best pay him back in the only coin he coveted: power. He dominated the politics and politicians of his time—without ever having been elected to any office. He was, in essence, above our democratic system. Robert Moses held power in the state for 44 years, through the governorships of Smith, Roosevelt, Lehman, Dewey, Harriman and Rockefeller, and in the city for 34 years, through the mayoralties of La Guardia, O'Dwyer, Impellitteri, Wagner and Lindsay, He personally conceived and carried through public works costing 27 billion dollars—he was undoubtedly America's greatest builder. This is how he built and dominated New York—before, finally, he was stripped of his reputation (by the press) and his power (by Nelson Rockefeller). But his work, and his will, had been done.
Download or read book The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx written by Arthur Nersesian and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Nersesian is this generation’s Mark Twain and the East River is his Mississippi.”—Jennifer Belle, author of High Maintenance “Nersesian is a first-rate observer of his native New York.”—Publishers Weekly "The unquestioned authority of Moses is difficult to fully grasp today -- this unimaginable, outsized character whose outrageous deeds seem the stuff of novels. And that is how Nersesian is tackling him, by blending fact with fiction. Historical events and persons are interwoven with a fascinating apocalyptic story and literary license, at last revealing the tumultuous life and legacy of Robert Moses. Faced with such a daunting subject matter and multi-volume work, Nersesian’s narrative is masterful."—Brooklyn Eagle The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx is the highly anticipated follow-up to The Swing Voter of Staten Island—the first two installments in Arthur Nersesian’s series of novels offering an alternate history of New York: The Five Books of Moses. Robert Moses was responsible for creating contemporary New York’s infrastructure, but he did so at the cost of destroying neighborhoods. In this novel, Robert has looted his brother Paul’s share of the Moses family fortune, repeatedly blocked his attempts at gaining public office, thwarted his career in the private sector, and set in motion events that decimate Paul’s home life. Paul Moses’ deep-seated rage metamorphoses into an act of terrorism committed against his brother and against a city that he once cherished. Although it can be read as a stand-alone novel about Robert and Paul Moses, The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx is also a memory play that follows Uli Sarkisian—the hero of The Swing Voter of Staten Island—en route to solving a massive historical crime, while desperately struggling to escape from becoming another one of its victims. Arthur Nersesian is the author of eight novels, including the smash hit The Fuck-Up (more than 100,000 copies sold), dogrun, Suicide Casanova (Akashic Books), and, most recently, The Swing Voter of Staten Island, the first volume in The Five Books of Moses series. He lives in New York City.
Download or read book Working written by Robert A. Caro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the great reporters of our time and probably the greatest biographer.” —The Sunday Times (London) From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker and The Years of Lyndon Johnson: an unprecedented gathering of vivid, candid, deeply moving recollections about his experiences researching and writing his acclaimed books. Now in paperback, Robert Caro gives us a glimpse into his own life and work in these evocatively written, personal pieces. He describes what it was like to interview the mighty Robert Moses and to begin discovering the extent of the political power Moses wielded; the combination of discouragement and exhilaration he felt confronting the vast holdings of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas; his encounters with witnesses, including longtime residents wrenchingly displaced by the construction of Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway and Lady Bird Johnson acknowledging the beauty and influence of one of LBJ's mistresses. He gratefully remembers how, after years of working in solitude, he found a writers' community at the New York Public Library, and details the ways he goes about planning and composing his books. Caro recalls the moments at which he came to understand that he wanted to write not just about the men who wielded power but about the people and the politics that were shaped by that power. And he talks about the importance to him of the writing itself, of how he tries to infuse it with a sense of place and mood to bring characters and situations to life on the page. Taken together, these reminiscences—some previously published, some written expressly for this book—bring into focus the passion, the wry self-deprecation, and the integrity with which this brilliant historian has always approached his work. To understand more about Robert Caro's research, see the Sony Pictures Classic documentary “Turn Every Page.”
Download or read book Robert Moses written by Pierre Christin and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The achievements of one man changed the face of an entire city. Robert Moses: the mastermind of New York. From the subway to the skyscraper, from Manhattan's Financial District to the Long Island suburbs, every inch of New York tells the story of this controversial urban planner's mind. In paperback for the first time, Pierre Christin and Olivier Balez's comic book takes on the infamous "Power Broker" and unlocks the historical battles that created the modern metropolis.
Download or read book Genesis written by Robert Alter and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1997-09-02 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A translation of Genesis, which attempts to recover the meanings of the ancient Hebrew and convey them in modern English prose. It is accompanied by a commentary and annotations, and aims to illuminate the original work without any touch of the fake antique.
Download or read book The Five Books of Moses written by Everett Fox and published by Schocken. This book was released on 1997 with total page 1064 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edited by Everett Fox Introductions Commentary Notes 1,056 pp.
Download or read book Creation to Completion written by Russell Resnik and published by Messianic Jewish Publishers. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Guide to Life's Journey from the Five Books of Moses * Have you ever wondered if the Pentateuch'the Five Books of Moses'is relevant to your life? * Do you think the Law, the Torah, has been relegated to a relic from another era? * How do the commandments, given to the Jewish people, contribute to society today? In Creation to Completion, Russell Resnik answers these questions, offering insight into the Torah. he shows that the Creator still desires his creatures to participate in bringing the Creation to completion. After each commentary, he presents a challenging thought "For the Journey."
Download or read book Wrestling with Moses written by Anthony Flint and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rivalry of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, a struggle for the soul of a city, is one of the most dramatic and consequential in modern American history. To a young Jane Jacobs, Greenwich Village, with its winding cobblestone streets and diverse makeup, was everything a city neighborhood should be. But consummate power broker Robert Moses, the father of many of New York’s most monumental development projects, thought neighborhoods like Greenwich Village were badly in need of “urban renewal.” Standing up against government plans for the city, Jacobs marshaled popular support and political power against Moses, whether to block traffic through her beloved Washington Square Park or to prevent the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, an elevated superhighway that would have destroyed centuries-old streetscapes and displaced thousands of families. By confronting Moses and his vision, Jacobs forever changed the way Americans understood the city. Her story reminds us of the power we have as individuals to confront and defy reckless authority.
Download or read book Radical Equations written by Robert Moses and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2002-06-10 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable story of the Algebra Project, a community-based effort to develop math-science literacy in disadvantaged schools—as told by the program’s founder “Bob Moses was a hero of mine. His quiet confidence helped shape the civil rights movement, and he inspired generations of young people looking to make a difference”—Barack Obama At a time when popular solutions to the educational plight of poor children of color are imposed from the outside—national standards, high-stakes tests, charismatic individual saviors—the acclaimed Algebra Project and its founder, Robert Moses, offer a vision of school reform based in the power of communities. Begun in 1982, the Algebra Project is transforming math education in twenty-five cities. Founded on the belief that math-science literacy is a prerequisite for full citizenship in society, the Project works with entire communities—parents, teachers, and especially students—to create a culture of literacy around algebra, a crucial stepping-stone to college math and opportunity. Telling the story of this remarkable program, Robert Moses draws on lessons from the 1960s Southern voter registration he famously helped organize: “Everyone said sharecroppers didn't want to vote. It wasn't until we got them demanding to vote that we got attention. Today, when kids are falling wholesale through the cracks, people say they don't want to learn. We have to get the kids themselves to demand what everyone says they don't want.” We see the Algebra Project organizing community by community. Older kids serve as coaches for younger students and build a self-sustained tradition of leadership. Teachers use innovative techniques. And we see the remarkable success stories of schools like the predominately poor Hart School in Bessemer, Alabama, which outscored the city's middle-class flagship school in just three years. Radical Equations provides a model for anyone looking for a community-based solution to the problems of our disadvantaged schools.
Download or read book Genesis Translation and Commentary written by Robert Alter and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1997-09-17 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[Here is] the Genesis for our generation and beyond."—Robert Fagles Genesis begins with the making of heaven and earth and all life, and ends with the image of a mummy—Joseph's—in a coffin. In between come many of the primal stories in Western culture: Adam and Eve's expulsion from the garden of Eden, Cain's murder of Abel, Noah and the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham's binding of Isaac, the covenant of God and Abraham, Isaac's blessing of Jacob in place of Esau, the saga of Joseph and his brothers. In Robert Alter's brilliant translation, these stories cohere in a powerful narrative of the tortuous relations between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, eldest and younger brothers, God and his chosen people, the people of Israel and their neighbors. Alter's translation honors the meanings and literary strategies of the ancient Hebrew and conveys them in fluent English prose. It recovers a Genesis with the continuity of theme and motif of a wholly conceived and fully realized book. His insightful, fully informed commentary illuminates the book in all its dimensions.
Download or read book A Prayer in Spring written by Robert Frost and published by Rizzoli Universe Promotional Books. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exquisitely illustrated edition of a timeless poem. Robert Frost s realistic depictions of rural life, especially of New England in the early twentieth century, are beautifully paired with the art created by Grandma Moses, the artist who epitomizes contemporary folk art. The result is a treasure to be enjoyed the whole year long. In spring, we give thanks for the natural and spiritual joys of the season. Moses s illustrations complement Frost s descriptions of the flowers, trees, bees, and other sights and sounds, which evoke a time of renewal and rebirth with illustrations that depict a place of quiet contemplation and endless possibility. A Prayer in Spring is a wonderful gift for lovers of Frost, Moses, poetry, and folk art, as well as for Easter baskets, birthdays, new babies, or for children and adults who can t wait for the season."
Download or read book The Fuck Up written by Arthur Nersesian and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-11-24 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arthur Nersesian's underground literary treasure is an unforgettable slice of gritty New York City life. This is the darkly hilarious odyssey of an anonymous slacker. He's a perennial couch-surfer, an aspiring writer searching for himself in spite of himself, and he's just trying to survive. But life has other things in store for the fuck-up. From being dumped by his girlfriend to getting fired for asking for a raise, from falling into a robbery to posing as a gay man to keep his job at a porno theater, the fuck-up's tragi-comedy is perfectly realized by Arthur Nersesian, who manages to create humor and suspense out of urban desperation. "Read it and howl," says Bruce Benderson (author of User), "and be glad it didn't happen to you."
