The Gonif


Book Description

LA’s oldest and most unconventional Jewish gumshoe has returned to stop a heist before it happens in the exciting fifth installment of the Amos Parisman Mystery series! To escape the predations of the Nazis, a rare two-hundred-year-old Torah is quietly smuggled out of a doomed North African Jewish community in the dead of night and put aboard a ship. Eventually, it makes its way to safety across the Atlantic. Generations after the war has ended, it resides in obscurity in a small, rundown Sephardic temple in Hollywood. The peace is shattered, however, when suddenly someone tries to break in and abscond with it. Amos Parisman, a local, agnostic, aging gumshoe, is recruited to thwart the would-be burglar. This sets him off on a madcap plunge into the world of international art and antiquities, and the ruthless kind of people who will stop at nothing—not even murder—to own them. The Gonif parses the difference between true wisdom and the coarse material world.




The Shamus


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Feh


Book Description

From the acclaimed author of Foreskin’s Lament, a memoir of the author’s attempt to escape the biblical story he’d been raised on and his struggle to construct a new story for himself and his family Shalom Auslander was raised like a veal in a dysfunctional family in the Orthodox community of Monsey, New York: the son of an alcoholic father; a guilt-wielding mother; and a violent, overbearing God. Now, as he reaches middle age, Auslander begins to suspect that what plagues him is something worse, something he can't so easily escape: a story. The story. One indelibly implanted in him at an early age, a story that told him he is fallen, broken, shameful, disgusting, a story we have all been told for thousands of years, and continue to be told by the religious and secular alike, a story called "Feh." Yiddish for "Yuck." Feh follows Auslander's midlife journey to rewrite that story, a journey that involves Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a Pulitzer-winning poet, Job, Arthur Schopenhauer, GHB, Wolf Blitzer, Yuval Noah Harari and a pastor named Steve in a now-defunct church in Los Angeles. Can he move from Feh to merely meh? Can he even dream of moving beyond that? Auslander's recounting of his attempt to exorcize the story he was raised with—before he implants it onto his children and/or possibly poisons the relationship of the one woman who loves him—isn’t sacred. It is more-than-occasionally profane. And like all his work, it is also relentlessly funny, subversively heartfelt and fearlessly provocative.




The Cosmopolitan


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Foreignisms


Book Description

English is full of foreign languages! As the world gets ever more connected, English pulls in all sorts of phrases and words--whatever gets the job done. From Latin and Greek terms in law and medicine to French words for food and dance, from Sanskrit to Russian and Chinese, English prospers and grows as it borrows.FOREIGNISMS: A Dictionary of Foreign Expressions Commonly (and Not So Commonly) Used in English is a fun, fascinating, alphabetical guide to hundreds of these terms, complete with easy pronunciation explanations. Never flounder or feel at a loss: with FOREIGNISMS, you'll know exactly what these funny, fancy, foreignisms mean.




The Nation


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Capone


Book Description

In this brilliant history of Prohibition and its most notorious gangster, acclaimed biographer Laurence Bergreen takes us to the gritty streets of Chicago where Al Capone forged his sinister empire. Bergreen shows the seedy and glamorous sides of the age, the rise of Prohibition, the illicit liquor trade, the battlefield that was Chicago. Delving beyond the Capone mythology. Bergreen finds a paradox: a coldblooded killer, thief, pimp, and racketeer who was also a devoted son and father; a self-styled Robin Hood who rose to the top of organized crime. Capone is a masterful portrait of an extraordinary time and of the one man who reigned supreme over it all, Al Capone.




The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English


Book Description

Booklist Top of the List Reference Source The heir and successor to Eric Partridge's brilliant magnum opus, The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, this two-volume New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is the definitive record of post WWII slang. Containing over 60,000 entries, this new edition of the authoritative work on slang details the slang and unconventional English of the English-speaking world since 1945, and through the first decade of the new millennium, with the same thorough, intense, and lively scholarship that characterized Partridge's own work. Unique, exciting and, at times, hilariously shocking, key features include: unprecedented coverage of World English, with equal prominence given to American and British English slang, and entries included from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, Ireland, and the Caribbean emphasis on post-World War II slang and unconventional English published sources given for each entry, often including an early or significant example of the term’s use in print. hundreds of thousands of citations from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, and songs illustrating usage of the headwords dating information for each headword in the tradition of Partridge, commentary on the term’s origins and meaning New to this edition: A new preface noting slang trends of the last five years Over 1,000 new entries from the US, UK and Australia New terms from the language of social networking Many entries now revised to include new dating, new citations from written sources and new glosses The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is a spectacular resource infused with humour and learning – it’s rude, it’s delightful, and it’s a prize for anyone with a love of language.




The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English


Book Description

The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang offers the ultimate record of modern, post WW2 American Slang. The 25,000 entries are accompanied by citations that authenticate the words as well as offer examples of usage from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, television shows, musical lyrics, and Internet user groups. Etymology, cultural context, country of origin and the date the word was first used are also provided. In terms of content, the cultural transformations since 1945 are astounding. Television, computers, drugs, music, unpopular wars, youth movements, changing racial sensitivities and attitudes towards sex and sexuality are all substantial factors that have shaped culture and language. This new edition includes over 500 new headwords collected with citations from the last five years, a period of immense change in the English language, as well as revised existing entries with new dating and citations. No term is excluded on the grounds that it might be considered offensive as a racial, ethnic, religious, sexual or any kind of slur. This dictionary contains many entries and citations that will, and should, offend. Rich, scholarly and informative, The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English is an indispensable resource for language researchers, lexicographers and translators.




Imagine My Joy


Book Description

The story of Yitzhak and Gita Pearl Cramer, Shimon Levi and Dobeh Blinick and their descendants is the account of one extended family but also a reflection of its times. Told in large part through first-person recollections, this family history traces the events that shaped two centuries, from Vitebsk and pre-revolutionary Czarist Russia to mid-20th Century North America. More than the author suspected when he began his research, the family progenitors and those who followed were directly affected by the major currents of the past 200 years: the edicts, anti-Semitism and heavy-handed policing of the Russian czars; the tragedy of world war; the great 19th century escape from grim impoverishment and discrimination in Europe to the bright hope of North America; economic blight and later post-war achievement. This story – reflecting the passions, dreams and humor of these people – is their legacy.