Fabulous Small Jews

Fabulous Small Jews

Author: Joseph Epstein

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2004-07-06

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0547526741

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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

Author: Joseph Epstein

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2003-07-07

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0547561644

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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.


Narcissus Leaves the Pool

Narcissus Leaves the Pool

Author: Joseph Epstein

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2007-07

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780618872169

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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".


Envy

Envy

Author: Joseph Epstein

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2003-08-28

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 9780195158120

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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.


Wind Sprints

Wind Sprints

Author: Joseph Epstein

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781604191004

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


Frozen in Time

Frozen in Time

Author: Joseph Epstein

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 163076194X

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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.


Gallimaufry

Gallimaufry

Author: Joseph Epstein

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781604191295

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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.


The Book of Aron

The Book of Aron

Author: Jim Shepard

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

Published: 2015-05-12

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 0771079990

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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.


Essays in Biography

Essays in Biography

Author: Joseph Epstein

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781604190687

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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.


The Smallest Crack

The Smallest Crack

Author: Roberta Kagan

Publisher:

Published: 2022-02-20

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781957207131

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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.