For players, coaches, writers, and fans, basketball is a science and an art, a religious sacrament, a source of entertainment, and a way of interacting with the world. In Lost in the Game Thomas Beller entwines these threads with his lifetime's experience as a player and journalist, roaming NBA locker rooms and city parks as a basketball flaneur in search of the meaning of the modern game. He captures the magnificence and mastery of today’s most accomplished NBA players while payi...

In his latest collection, Thomas Beller trains his piercing literary eye on how a single, seismic event indelibly shapes the trajectory of the common and mundane experiences of one’s life. Weaving together a charming set of autobiographical stories, Beller interrogates the randomness and contingencies that separate sadness from joy, death from life. His father escaped the Nazis, only to die in America from cancer when Beller was nine years old. Beller measures how this loss impacted his li...

From strip clubs to the Academy Awards to the basketball court—a ride through the landscape of guyhood.Acclaimed fiction writer Thomas Beller digs deep into his own history in this humorous and insightful collection about the state of masculinity. With sharp and engaging eloquence he discourses on T-shirts; being your mother's date at the Academy Awards; life at a bagel factory; the irrational pleasures of old American cars—and the mysterious disappearance of the a...

Since the Enlightenment, human equality and freedom have been sacralized objectives that have become emblematic of developed countries: "men are born free and equal in law". However, even if we have seen a clear decline in inequality in the strict sense of the term over the last few decades, some inequalities are disappearing and others are emerging, as if inequality were still chronic. Is this an evil? Not totally, equality means the end of distinction and a homogeneous society without re...

"In the same way Salinger carved out the niche of male adolescence ....Beller approaches that mutable boy-to-man territory."—San Francisco ChronicleWriting with the sparkling wit and insight of his highly praised debut, Seduction Theory ("Brilliantly captures the great expectations and recurring ambivalence of youth."—The New York Times), Thomas Beller continues to plumb the adventures of his hero, Alex Fader, a youthful existentialist an...

J.D. Salinger published his first story in The New Yorker at age twenty-nine. Three years later came The Catcher in The Rye, a novel that has sold more than sixty-five million copies and achieved mythic status since its publication in 1951. Subsequent books introduced a new type in contemporary literature: the introspective, hyperarticulate Glass family, whose stage is the Upper East Side. Yet we still know little about Salinger’s personal life and less about his characte...

Reading The Catcher in the Rye has become a rite of passage for young Americans, landing the book on bestseller lists (and banned book lists) each year, even though it was published a half century ago. What is it about J. D. Salinger and his body of work that has left such a lasting mark on American fiction? And who better to answer that question than the current generation of writers?Here are fourteen of the most vital voices in the contemporary American fiction ...

Dark, but filled with bright genius, Women in Love is a prophetic masterpiece steeped in eroticism, filled with perceptions about sexual power and obsession that have proven to be timeless and true.

The Rainbow tells the story of three generations of the Brangwen family, who live in the East Midlands of England near Nottingham. The book spans a period of roughly 65 years from the 1840s to 1905, and shows how the love relationships of the Brangwens change against the backdrop of the increasing industrialisation of Britain. The Rainbow is a 1915 novel by British author D. H. Lawrence. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family living in Nottinghamshire, particularly focusing on...

The third published novel of D. H. Lawrence, taken by many to be his earliest masterpiece, tells the story of Paul Morel, a young man and budding artist. Richard Aldington explains the semi-autobiographical nature of his masterpiece: When you have experienced Sons and Lovers you have lived through the agonies of the young Lawrence striving to win free from his old life'. Generally, it is not only considered as an evocative portrayal of working-class life in a mining community, but also an ...

David Herbert Lawrence (September 11, 1985 – March 2, 1930) was an English writer. Much of Lawrence’s work was based off his family life, which featured tension between his father, a coal mine worker, and his mother who was a schoolmistress.Lawrence’s opinions as well as the sexual content of some of his works made him a lot of enemies in his homeland and some of his novels were banned for many years. Lawrence and his wife left England after World War I and mostly ...

This Side of Paradise is F. Scott Fitzgerald's groundbreaking debut novel, a vivid and introspective portrait of youth, ambition, and self-discovery in early twentieth-century America. First published in 1920, the novel announced the arrival of a powerful new literary voice and captured the restless spirit of a generation searching for meaning in a rapidly changing world. The story follows Amory Blaine, a charming and idealistic young man as he journeys from his privileged upbringing throu...