“A clever send-up of Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Richard Ford.” –GQ An ambitious set in the literary world of 1970s New York, following a washed-up writer in an errant quest to pick up the pieces of his life. One of Esquire's Best books of the year (So Far), The Millions’ Most Anticipated Books of the Second Half of the year, and BuzzFeed’s Exciting New Books You Need To Read This Summer, nominated for the PEN Open Book Award The year is 1973, and Alan Eastman, a public intellectual, accidental cultural critic, washed-up war journalist, husband, and philanderer; finds himself alone on the floor of his study in an existential crisis. His wife has taken their kids and left him to live with her mother in New Jersey, and his best work feels as though it is years behind him. In the depths of despair, he receives an unexpected and unwelcome phone call from his old rival dating back to his days on the Harvard literary journal, offering him the chance to go to Vietnam to write the definitive account of the end of America's longest war. Seeing his opportunity to regain his wife’s love and admiration while reclaiming his former literary glory, he sets out for Vietnam. But instead of the return to form as a pioneering war correspondent that he had hoped for, he finds himself in Saigon, grappling with the same problems he thought he'd left back in New York. Following his widely acclaimed debut, From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, Alex Gilvarry employs the same thoughtful, yet dark sense of humor in Eastman Was Here to capture one irredeemable man's search for meaning in the face of advancing age, fading love, and a rapidly-changing world. “With his second book, Gilvarry establishes himself as a writer who defies expectation, convention and categorization. Eastman Was Here is a dark, riotously funny and audacious exploration of the sacred and the profane—and pretty much everything in between.” —Téa Obreht, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife
In this intimate account of Jemez Pueblo from distant times to the modern era, historian Joe S. Sando profiles the multi-faceted history of one of the most vital and enduring of the Pueblo Indian communities of New Mexico. It is intimate because it is a story told by an insider, one whose experiences and perceptions of Jemez span nearly six decades. Sando writes about many of the events he describes with the authority of a participant and a witness. Sando follows the story of the Hemish (people of Jemez) from the origins and development of Pueblo civilization, the Spanish colonial period and the American territorial period to the continuing struggles with the United States Government to maintain sovereignty, land and water rights so vital to the survival of the Pueblo people today. While some of the history is similar to that of the other nineteen Pueblo Indian villages in the southwest, much of it is unique to Jemez. Although the villages are closely related to one another historically, socially, and culturally, each is considered by its citizens to be a sovereign nation, with all the rights and responsibilities normally associated with international states. Each has its own government, customs, languages and sense of destiny. In addition to detailing the history of Jemez Pueblo, Sando discusses Pueblo government, land ownership and water rights, farming and irrigation, the coming of the railroad, the influence of the Catholic church, the influx of people from Pecos Pueblo (now part of Jemez), education at the pueblo, the town's astonishing success in the sport of long-distance running and the artists past and present who continue to contribute so much to the culture of the community.The appendix contains a compendium of information about the pueblo, including a list of tribal officers since 1598 as well as a list of Jemez Pueblo college graduates.
Explores the dramatic true story of a group of gay and lesbian Jews confronting questions of sexual identity within a traditional religious framework in the creation of the largest gay congregation.
Violent rabbis, lovelorn wives, a busy Grim Reaper, shame-filled simians, and one seriously angry deity populate this humorous and disquieting collection. Shalom Auslander's stories in Beware of God have the mysterious punch of a dream. They are wide ranging and inventive: A young Jewish man's inexplicable transformation into a very large, blond, tattooed goy ends with a Talmudic argument over whether or not his father can beat his unclean son with a copy of the Talmud. A pious man having a near-death experience discovers that God is actually a chicken, and he's forced to reconsider his life -- and his diet. At God's insistence, Leo Schwartzman searches Home Depot for supplies for an ark. And a young boy mistakes Holocaust Remembrance Day as emergency preparedness training for the future. Auslander draws upon his upbringing in an Orthodox Jewish community in New York State to craft stories that are filled with shame, sex, God, and death, but also manage to be wickedly funny and poignant.
Through the perspective of having grown up among "HinJews" in the Ram Dass community and cannabis legalization movement, journalist Madison Margolin takes the reader on a journey inside New York's Jewish counterculture and the Hasidic underground, reconciling her roots, tackling ancestral Jewish trauma, and finding intersectionality between the Jewish and psychedelic experience. Exile and Ecstasy sets out to explore the psychedelic path that occupies the crossroads between the Ram Dass movement and Hasidism. It's a path of seeking and escape, rebellion and return, medicine and magic. Bridging the polar ends of the Jewish and psychedelic worlds, while buttressing the experience with expert reportage, Madison Margolin prods at Be Here Now to find its relevance and utility in a new generation, facing different issues than those Ram Dass faced as a generally well-to-do boomer. In doing so, she looks at solutions to our lack of presence and offers practices that help us integrate our psychedelic experiences in mundane life, as well as in the context of our roots and religious identities. This book is for anyone looking to feel spiritually kindled, to make peace with where they come from, and to reconcile seemingly disparate experiences of spirituality and psychedelics, with traditional religion.