Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547526741
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
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
Fabulous Small Jews
Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547526741
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
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
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547526741
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
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
Snobbery
Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547561644
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
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.
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547561644
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
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.
In a Cardboard Belt!
Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618721931
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 446
Book Description
Writing as a memoirist, polemicist, literary critic, and amused observer of contemporary culture, the author of "Snobbery" and "Friendship" presents this engaging collection of essays that captures his witty, entertaining responses to the richness and variety of life.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618721931
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 446
Book Description
Writing as a memoirist, polemicist, literary critic, and amused observer of contemporary culture, the author of "Snobbery" and "Friendship" presents this engaging collection of essays that captures his witty, entertaining responses to the richness and variety of life.
Envy
Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195158120
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195158120
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Book Description
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.
Essays in Biography
Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604190687
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
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.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604190687
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
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.
Gallimaufry
Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604191295
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
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.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604191295
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
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.
A Complicated Jew
Author: Hillel Halkin
Publisher: Wicked Son
ISBN: 1642938114
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Wicked Son
ISBN: 1642938114
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
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.
The Wild Card
Author: Karl Shapiro
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252066894
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
Supported by a grant from the Eric Mathieu King Fund of the Academy of American Poets.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252066894
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
Supported by a grant from the Eric Mathieu King Fund of the Academy of American Poets.
Wind Sprints
Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604191004
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Wind Sprints contains 142 short essays on a wide variety of subjects.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604191004
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Wind Sprints contains 142 short essays on a wide variety of subjects.
The Book of Aron
Author: Jim Shepard
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 0771079990
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 175
Book Description
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.
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 0771079990
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 175
Book Description
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.