A remarkable memoir of resisting a legacy of organized crime and creating a new life: "A fascinating read" ( Commonweal).Prostitution, gambling, fencing, contract murder, loan-sharking, political corruption and crimes of every sort were the daily trade in Philadelphia's Tenderloin, the oldest part of town. The Kevitch family ruled this stew for half a century, from Prohibition to the rise of Atlantic City. My mother was a Kevitch.

The poet - a man of the world in the widest sense - reflects and in reflection relives the intense experiences that shaped him and that have shaped our modern world. Salvage at Twilight ends with 'Deposition', a harrowing elegy in five parts: the beloved endures 'her Nile of pain'; the lover attends as she is treated, the last scene postponed until the two selves are quite differently refined. His editor has written, 'Dan Burt's poetry, like his prose, explores themes unusual in contempora...

Including poems, sequences, and a prose memoir, this collection looks at the 20th century and its aftermath through the shattered lens of John Ruskin's famous book and the work of certain modern painters. With steady, truth-telling poems, this compilation is not only inspired by the poet's collaborations with artists, but also charts his remarkable journey from the backstreets of Philadelphia to Cambridge and Yale. Lyrical, philosophical, elegiac, and satirical as appropriate, these tradit...

Every Wrong Direction recreates and dissects the bitter education of Dan Burt, an American émigré who never found a home in America. It begins in the row homes of Jewish immigrants and working-class Italians on the mean streets of 1950s South Philadelphia. Every Wrong Direction follows the author from the rough, working-class childhood that groomed him to be a butcher or charter boat captain, through America, Britain and Saudi Arabia as student, lawyer, spy, culture warri...

Faced with the sale of the century-old family summer house on Cape Cod where he had spent forty-two summers, George Howe Colt recounts returning for one last stay with his wife and children in this stunning memoir that was a National Book Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.This poignant tribute to the eleven-bedroom jumble of gables, bays, and dormers that watched over weddings, divorces, deaths, anniversaries, birthdays, breakdow...

An almost unnaturally poignant love story from the father of “Gonzo” journalism and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson.What makes the romantic short story Screwjack so touching, for all its queerness, is the aching melancholy in its depiction of the modern man's burden: that "we are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School...and after that maybe even to Law School. We will never see her again."Hunter S. Thompson’s mos...

Urban Fantasy meets Future NoirOnce people have messed with a man's DNA, what can he do but become a private eye? And when a gorgeous thing like Elizabeth Savoy comes gliding into his office and blinks her big baby blues, what can PI Mike Heller do but say sure—even though he sees just what she is, and knows what a bad idea it could be? Not that Heller has a clue just how bad. But by the time he suspects that Lizzie's troubles might bring the end of life as he knows it, he's already...

Everyone loves wordplay! This collection of more than eight hundred quips and pun-filled anecdotes will have your friends in stitches! Classics and new inventions fill these pages with humor and wit. Divided into chapters according to theme—animals, celebrities, careers, food, and so on—there’s a pun for every occasion! Author Gary Blake dares you not to snicker at his contrivances:Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.Davy Crockett had three ears. A left ear, a...

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY DWIGHT GARNER, THE NEW YORK TIMES • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle |NPR | The Root | The Telegraph | The Globe and MailNATIONAL BESTSELLER • FINALIST, PHILLIS WHEATLEY BOOK AWARD • TEJU COLE WAS NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AFRICANS OF THE YEAR BY NEW AFRICAN MAGAZINEFor readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Ad...

The former U.S. Poet Laureate contemplates life, death, and the view from his window in these "a lternately lyrical and laugh-out-loud funny " essays ( The New York Times).From an early age, Donald Hall dedicated his life to the written word. In his long and celebrated career, he was an accomplished poet, essayist, memoirist, dramatist, and children's author. Now, in the "unknown, unanticipated galaxy" of very old age, his ...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The first volume of collected short fiction from the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain, featuring sixty-eight “varied, clever, and delightful” (The Chicago Tribune) short stories, including seven never-before-published tales“Each [story hops] with manic energy . . . at his vaulting, imaginative best Boyle suggests the bastard child of Flannery O’Connor and Monty Python.”—The Miami Her...

An essential collection of career-spanning writings by the political satirist and #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Parliament of Whores.From his early pieces for the National Lampoon, through his classic reporting as Rolling Stone's International Affairs editor in the 1980s and 1990s, and his brilliant, inimitable political journalism and analysis, P. J. O'Rourke has been entertaining and provoking readers with high octane...