Berlin, 1931. Jakob Fabian works in the advertising department of a cigarette factory by day and drifts through bars, brothels and artist studios with his wealthy and debauched friend Labude by night. When Fabian meets the beautiful and confident Cornelia, he manages to shed his pessimistic attitude for a brief moment and falls in love. Not long after, he falls victim to the great wave of layoffs sweeping the city, plunging him back into a depression,...

The award-winning author of Minor Characters writes with delicious transparency about a love that cannot be harnessed and a woman who refuses to be deceived. In the great wave of husband-leaving ushered in by the Sexual Revolution, Molly Held frees herself from her cold, flagrantly unfaithful husband after their final quarrel turns violent. With her five-year-old son, she lights out for an Upper West Side apartment and the new life she hopes to find...

Even before Lawrence Block could rest on his laurels from In Sunlight or In Shadow, a question arose. What would he do for an encore? Suppose each author was invited to select a painting from the whole panoply of visual art-From the cave drawings at Lascaux to a contemporary abstract canvas on which the paint has barely dried. And what a dazzling response! Joyce Carol Oates picked Le Beaux Jours by Balthus. Warren Moore chose Salvador Dali's The...

"A modern-day Gaslight" The Blue Prussian is a spellbinding story told by Blake O'Brien, a beautiful, young executive with a globetrotting career. Blake returns to her native Manhattan from San Francisco after escaping-or so she thinks-her marriage to a dashing man who turned out to be a prince of darkness. She had been hoping for a fresh start but learns that she has been poisoned with thallium-a deadly neurotoxin referred to as the poisoner's...

In The Great Boom, historian Robert Sobel tells the fascinating story of the last 50 years when American entrepreneurs, visionaries, and ordinary citizens transformed our depression and war-exhausted society into today's economic powerhouse. As America's G.I.s returned home from World War II, many of the nation's best minds predicted a new depression-yet exactly the opposite occurred. Jobs were plentiful in retooled factories swamped with orders...

This is the first anthology in more than half a century to offer fresh insight into the history of Jews and Judaism in America. Beginning with six chronological survey essays, the collection builds with twelve topical essays focusing on a variety of important themes in the American Jewish and Judaic experience. The volume opens with early Jewish settlers (1654-1820), the expansion of Jewish life in America (1820-1901), the great wave of eastern European...

"When you spend many hours alone in a room you have more than the usual chances to disgust yourself--this is the problem of the body, not that it is mortal but that it is mortifying. When we were young they taught us do not touch it, but who can keep from touching it, from scratching off the juicy scab?"--

Examines the great wave of European exploration during the fifteenth century which resulted in more accurate maps.

Introduces fifty celebrated works of art, including King Tut's sarcophagus and Andy Warhol's paintings of Campbell's soup cans, with historical and interpretive information for each piece.