Murray Tepper would say that he is an ordinary New Yorker who is simply trying to read the newspaper in peace. But he reads while sitting behind the wheel of his parked car, and his car always seems to be in a particularly desirable parking spot. Not surprisingly, he is regularly interrupted by drivers who want to know if he is going out. Tepper isn’t going out. Why not? His explanations tend to be rather literal: the indisputable fact, for instance, that he has twenty minutes left on the meter. Tepper’s behavior sometimes irritates the people who want his spot. (“Is that where you live? Is that car rent-controlled?”) It also irritates the mayor—Frank Ducavelli, known in tabloid headlines as Il Duce—who sees Murray Tepper as a harbinger of what His Honor always calls “the forces of disorder.” But once New Yorkers become aware of Tepper, some of them begin to suspect that he knows something they don’t know. And an ever-increasing number of them are willing to line up for the opportunity to sit in his car with him and find out. Tepper Isn’t Going Out is a wise and witty story of an ordinary man who, perhaps innocently, changes the world around him. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Calvin Trillin's Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin.
“Brilliant . . . The dean of American comic writers showcases his varied talents mocking the public and private lives of politicians, average citizens and himself.”—The Star-Ledger Calvin Trillin has committed blatant acts of funniness all over the place—in The New Yorker, in one-man off-Broadway shows, in his “deadline poetry” for The Nation, in comic novels, and in what USA Today called “simply the funniest regular column in journalism.” Now Trillin selects the best of his funny stuff and organizes it into topics like high finance (“My long-term investment strategy has been criticized as being entirely too dependent on Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes”) and the literary life (“The average shelf life of a book is somewhere between milk and yogurt”). He addresses the horrors of witnessing a voodoo economics ceremony and the mystery of how his mother managed for thirty years to feed her family nothing but leftovers (“We have a team of anthropologists in there now looking for the original meal”). He even skewers deserving political figures in poetry. In this, the definitive collection of his humor, Calvin Trillin is prescient, insightful, and invariably hilarious. “A literary treasure . . . There is only one Calvin Trillin, and if he didn’t exist we would have to invent him.”—The Washington Times “Funny is to Trillin what drinking is to Uncle Jed in Annie Get Your Gun—it’s what he does ‘natur’lly.’ He’s also a lot more than funny. Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin is the twenty-eighth book he’s published over not far short of a half-century, and their range of subjects is remarkable.”—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post “Trillin made his reputation over four decades as the author of ‘U.S. Journal’ in the New Yorker [but he] is incapable of resisting the temptation of comedy. The jokes kept on welling up and Mr. Trillin made a parallel reputation as a writer of funny stuff.”—The Economist “Wry, whip-smart, understated, and entertaining.”—The Miami Herald
A sparkling commentary on our national life--public and private--at the close of the '80s, as seen through the eyes of a fresh, original, provocative, inspiring, and funny writer.People.
“One of the most satisfying science fiction novels I have read in years.”—The New York Times Book Review Here is a novel as original as the breathtaking, unspoiled world for which it is named, a place where all appears to be in idyllic balance. Generations ago, humans fled to the cosmic anomaly known as Grass. Over time, they evolved a new and intricate society. But before humanity arrived, another species had already claimed Grass for its own. It, too, had developed a culture. . . . Now, a deadly plague is spreading across the stars. No world save Grass has been left untouched. Marjorie Westriding Yrarier has been sent from Earth to discover the secret of the planet’s immunity. Amid the alien social structure and strange life-forms of Grass, Lady Westriding unravels the planet’s mysteries to find a truth so shattering it could mean the end of life itself.
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Calvin Trillin's Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin. In Calvin Trillin’s antic tales of family life, she was portrayed as the wife who had “a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day” and the mother who thought that if you didn’t go to every performance of your child’s school play, “the county would come and take the child.” Now, five years after her death, her husband offers this loving portrait of Alice Trillin off the page–his loving portrait of Alice Trillin off the page–an educator who was equally at home teaching at a university or a drug treatment center, a gifted writer, a stunningly beautiful and thoroughly engaged woman who, in the words of a friend, “managed to navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and still delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in.” Though it deals with devastating loss, About Alice is also a love story, chronicling a romance that began at a Manhattan party when Calvin Trillin desperately tried to impress a young woman who “seemed to glow.” “You have never again been as funny as you were that night,” Alice would say, twenty or thirty years later. “You mean I peaked in December of 1963?” “I’m afraid so.” But he never quit trying to impress her. In his writing, she was sometimes his subject and always his muse. The dedication of the first book he published after her death read, “I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice.” In that spirit, Calvin Trillin has, with About Alice, created a gift to the wife he adored and to his readers.
Henry Schiller, a New York songwriter and musician, is in love with an aloof younger woman, but their relationship grows even more complicated when he discovers he has testicular cancer.
The Myth of Capitalism tells the story of how America has gone from an open, competitive marketplace to an economy where a few very powerful companies dominate key industries that affect our daily lives. Digital monopolies like Google, Facebook and Amazon act as gatekeepers to the digital world. Amazon is capturing almost all online shopping dollars. We have the illusion of choice, but for most critical decisions, we have only one or two companies, when it comes to high speed Internet, health insurance, medical care, mortgage title insurance, social networks, Internet searches, or even consumer goods like toothpaste. Every day, the average American transfers a little of their pay check to monopolists and oligopolists. The solution is vigorous anti-trust enforcement to return America to a period where competition created higher economic growth, more jobs, higher wages and a level playing field for all. The Myth of Capitalism is the story of industrial concentration, but it matters to everyone, because the stakes could not be higher. It tackles the big questions of: why is the US becoming a more unequal society, why is economic growth anemic despite trillions of dollars of federal debt and money printing, why the number of start-ups has declined, and why are workers losing out.
Have you ever wanted to sneak behind the curtain of some of Broadway's greatest hits including Wicked, Rent, and A Chorus Line? Do you wonder what Patti LuPone revealed to Raul Esparza about Broadway dressing rooms or wish you were a fly on the wall during Audra McDonald's big break auditions? Are you dying to know why Laura Linney would watch Stockard Channing from the rafters each night? From opening nights to closing nights. From secret passageways to ghostly encounters. From Broadway debuts to landmark productions. Score a front row seat to read hundreds of stories about the most important stages in the world, seen through the eyes of the producers, actors, stagehands, writers, musicians, company managers, dressers, designers, directors, ushers, and door men who bring The Great White Way to life each night. You'll never look at Broadway the same way again. This is the second book in a multi-volume series that will tell the stories of all of the Broadway theaters. Volume 2 includes the Barrymore, the Circle in the Square, the Criterion Center Stage Right, the Gershwin, the Nederlander, the Palace, the Shubert, and the Vivian Beaumont: eight Broadway theaters that light up New York City. Volume 2 Interviewees: Deborah Abramson, Loni Ackerman, Lynn Ahrens, Rose M. Alaio, Mana Allen, Charlie Alterman, Michael Arden, Brittnye Batchelor, Bryan Batt, Hunter Bell, Marty Bell, Brig Berney, Michael Berresse, Ken Billington, Sandy Binion, Patricia Birch, Andre Bishop, Nick Blaemire, Corbin Bleu, Heidi Blickenstaff, Walter Bobbie, Anne Bobby, Chris Boneau, Beowulf Boritt, Christian Borle, Jeff Bowen, Jason Robert Brown, Jeb Brown, Laura Bell Bundy, Todd Buonopane, Jonathan Burkhart, Danny Burstein, Liz Callaway, Liz Caplan, Len Cariou, Craig Carnelia, Eileen Casey, Harrison Chad, Ted Chapin, Nancy Coyne, Gavin Creel, Charlotte d'Amboise, Ken Davenport, Penny Davis, Carmel Dean, Robin De Jesus, Ed Dixon, Christopher Durang, James Dybas, Jake Epstein, Raul Esparza, Ben Fankhauser, Tim Federle, Philip Feller, Bert Fink, Terry Finn, Stephen Flaherty, Merwin Foard, Shannon Ford, Hunter Foster, Fritz Frizsell, Larry Fuller, Artie Gaffin, Jack Gale, David Gallo, Irene Gandy, Chris Gattelli, Joanna Gleason, Annie Golden, Jason Graae, Todd Graff, Randy Graff, Ilene Graff, Amanda Green, Michael Greif, Harry Groener, Jonathan Groff, Julie Halston, Ann Harada, F. Michael Haynie, Diane Heatherington, Laura Heller, Tom Hewitt, John Hickok, Larry Hochman, Abe Jacob, Sally J. Jacobs, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Jeremy Jordan, Doug Katsaros, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Steve C. Kennedy, Chad Kimball, Eddie Korbich, Michael John LaChiusa, Liz Larsen, Baayork Lee, Telly Leung, Caissie Levy, Peter Link, Laura Linney, Jose Llana, William Ivey Long, David Loud, Anna Louizos, Hal Luftig, Arielle Tepper Madover, James Maloney, Richard Maltby Jr., Joe Mantello, Josh Marquette, Kathleen Marshall, Mel Marvin, Tony Massey, Michael Mayer, Neil Mazzella, Elizabeth McCann, Kevin McCollum, Donna McKechnie, John McMartin, Lindsay Mendez, Michael Mendez, Alan Menken, Joanna Merlin, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jessica Molaskey, Eric William Morris, Randy Morrison, Robert Morse, Julia Murney, Austin Nathaniel, George Nestor, Casey Nicholaw, Jack O'Brien, Kelli O'Hara, Brynn O'Malley, Laura Osnes, Evan Pappas, Michon Peacock, Tim Pettolina, Hayley Podschun, Red Press, Lonny Price, Harold Prince, Ben Rappaport, Krysta Rodriguez, Steve Rosen, Daryl Roth, Michael Rupert, Alex Rybeck, Harvey Sabinson, Sarah Saltzberg, Don Scardino, Justin Scribner, Joan Shepard, David Shire, Rick Sordelet, Louis St. Louis, Michael Starobin, Don Stitt, David Stone, Charles Strouse, Julie Taymor, Bernie Telsey, Mary Testa, Joe Traina, Taylor Trensch, Mike VanPraagh, Donna Vivino, Frank Vlastnik, Jim Walton, Tony Walton, Robert E. Wankel, John Weidman, Ira Weitzman, George C. Wolfe, Amy Wolk, Greg Woolard, James Woolley, Nick Wyman, Maury Yeston, Brian Yorkey, Jerry"
