It was my fascination itself with the English language that made me a writer," Apple wrote in an essay for the New York Times Book Review. Its endless suggestiveness has carried me through many a plot, entertained me when nothing else could." Growing up in a Yiddish-speaking family, Apple writes a prose that is remarkably attuned to America's cultural and linguistic With the 1976 publication of The Oranging of America, and Other Stories, Apple established himself as one of America's most a...

Howard Johnson and Walt Disney are determined to acquire land near Orlando, Florida from Margery Post Merriweather, heiress of the family cereal fortune.“Reading this book is like peeling an artichoke. The outer leaves are big belly laughs at tried-and-true themes such as boosterism and oversanitized motels, but as we get below the surface we come upon ever smaller and more delicate morsels of human frailty until we wonder how much more of ourselves we can take.”—Florence King, The...

“Shows just how well comedy and criticism can mix with understanding. The story parodies the form and language”--Bookforum

This is the first collection to appear in twenty years from one of America's best short story writers. His thirteen stories are marvelous—funny, heartbreaking, and wise by turns, and on occasion all three at once.Praise for The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories:"Thank you, Mr. Apple! There's an art to writing a sad story that's also fun to read... Many of Apple's stories are heartbreaking, but there's hardly a page that doesn't yield a smile at one line or anothe...

So what's a nice Jewish boy like Ira Goldstein doing managing a flashy Puerto Rican boxer named Jésus? What is his mother doing in the arms of Solomon, the scrap-metal king of Detroit? And what, for toppers, is J. Edgar Hoover doing in a chair suspended over a boxing ring in Havana, Cuba? Charge it all to zip—that elusive form of human energy that makes hearts leap, cash flow, ideologies tremble, the world go round. Ira could sure use some zip, so he tries to find it.

From the author of The Oranging of America comes this inspiring true story about an American family. Rocky takes over a family, at the age of 103, and shows them how to survive.“In the end, it is Apple's affecting writing about his deepest loss that carries this book.”—Kirkus Reviews

Taking the beloved symbol of merriment out of his conventional trappings and into the world of imaginative folklore, Baum gives Santa Claus an exciting life that evokes all the charm, warmth, and fantasy that made his Oz stories American classics.

From the hit podcast and radio show, a collection of soul-bearing stories from The Moth's archives.A wedding toast hone horribly awry. A rapper's obsession with a Sarah McLachlan song. A death-defying stunt in a bullring. The fight to save Mother Teresa's life. These are the spellbinding tales from The Moth's storytellers.Inspired by friends telling stories on a porch, The Moth was born in small-town Georgia, garnered a cult following in New York City, and th...

From award-winning actor Billy Crystal, a moving memoir about fathers and sons, based on his one-man Broadway show.To support his family, Billy Crystal's father, Jack, worked two jobs, having only one day a week to spend with his family. *700 Hundred Sundays—*referring sadly to the time shared by an adoring father and his devoted son—is a heartfelt, hilarious, and heartbreaking memoir about sacrifice for the love of one's family, and holding those we love dear.

A Madison Avenue adman returns to the Bronx of his youth in this New York Times bestseller by the author of Kramer vs. Kramer: "Charming" ( The New York Times).Growing up in the Bronx in the 1940s, Steven Robbins was raised on egg creams, baseball stats, and the camaraderie that kept his melting-pot Bronx neighborhood humming during World War II. Robbins aspired to escape his humble roots, and eventually worked his way to Madison Avenue, ...

"An excellent book by a genius," said Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., of this now classic exploration of the 1960s from the founder of new journalism."This is a book that will be a sharp pleasure to reread years from now, when it will bring back, like a falcon in the sky of memory, a whole world that is currently jetting and jazzing its way somewhere or other."--NewsweekIn his first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965) Wolfe ...

Sean Thomas Dougherty celebrates the struggles, the dignity, and the joys of working-class life in the Rust Belt. Finding delight in everyday moments—a night at a packed karaoke bar, a father and daughter planting a garden, a biography of LeBron James as a metaphor for Ohio—these poems take pride in the people who survive despite all odds, who keep going without any concern for glory, fighting with wit and grace for justice, for joy, every god damned day.