Fabulous Small Jews

Fabulous Small Jews PDF Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547526741
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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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

Fabulous Small Jews PDF Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547526741
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book Here

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

Snobbery PDF Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547561644
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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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.

People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present

People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present PDF Author: Dara Horn
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393531570
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish Life and Prac­tice Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living. Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture—and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks—Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present. Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life—trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study—to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.

Envy

Envy PDF Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195158120
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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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.

Narcissus Leaves the Pool

Narcissus Leaves the Pool PDF Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618872169
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
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".

The Wild Card

The Wild Card PDF Author: Karl Shapiro
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252066894
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Supported by a grant from the Eric Mathieu King Fund of the Academy of American Poets.

Wind Sprints

Wind Sprints PDF Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604191004
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Wind Sprints contains 142 short essays on a wide variety of subjects.

Essays in Biography

Essays in Biography PDF Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604190687
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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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

Gallimaufry PDF Author: Joseph Epstein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604191295
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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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 Companion to the American Short Story

A Companion to the American Short Story PDF Author: Alfred Bendixen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119685648
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description