NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Compared by critics to Kafka, Joyce, and Musil, H. G. Adler is becoming recognized as one of the towering figures of twentieth-century fiction. Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti wrote that “Adler has restored hope to modern literature,” and the first two novels rediscovered after his death, Panorama and The Journey, were acclaimed as “modernist masterpieces” by The New Yorker . Now his magnum opus, The Wall, the final installment of Adler’s Shoah trilogy and his crowning achievement as a novelist, is available for the first time in English. Drawing upon Adler’s own experiences in the Holocaust and his postwar life, The Wall , like the other works in the trilogy, nonetheless avoids detailed historical specifics. The novel tells the story of Arthur Landau, survivor of a wartime atrocity, a man struggling with his nightmares and his memories of the past as he strives to forge a new life for himself. Haunted by the death of his wife, Franziska, he returns to the city of his youth and receives confirmation of his parents’ fates, then crosses the border and leaves his homeland for good. Embarking on a life of exile, he continues searching for his place within the world. He attempts to publish his study of the victims of the war, yet he is treated with curiosity, competitiveness, and contempt by fellow intellectuals who escaped the conflict unscathed. Afflicted with survivor’s guilt, Arthur tries to leave behind the horrors of the past and find a foothold in the present. Ultimately, it is the love of his second wife, Johanna, and his two children that allows him to reaffirm his humanity while remembering all he’s left behind. The Wall is a magnificent epic of survival and redemption, powerfully told through stream of consciousness and suffused with daydream, fantasy, memory, nightmare, and pure imagination. More than a portrait of a Holocaust survivor’s journey, it is a universal novel about recovering from the traumas of the past and finding a way to live again. Praise for The Wall “[A] majestic novel . . . Adler’s prose is tidal, surge after narrative surge rushing forward and then enigmatically receding, the moment displaced by memory, and memory by introspective soliloquy.” —Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review “A towering meditation on the self and spirit . . . The writing is sonorous and so entirely devastating that the reader is compelled to pore over every word.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Masterful and utterly unique.” —The Jerusalem Post “Haunting and utterly heart-wrenching . . . a literary masterpiece.” —Historical Novels Review “An epic novel . . . an unforgettable portrait.” —The Jewish Week “[A] pensive portrait of a man struggling to find a place in the world after enduring transformative calamity . . . an eloquent record of suffering—and perhaps of redemption as well.” — Kirkus Reviews Praise for H. G. Adler’s novels The Journey and Panorama, translated by Peter Filkins “Modernist masterpieces worthy of comparison to those of Kafka or Musil.” — The New Yorker “Haunting . . . as remarkable for its literary experimentation as for its historical testimony.” —San Francisco Chronicle , on Panorama

When her grandma asks her about school, a girl draws a class portrait, adding details that show what makes each person special. Includes author's note abou making pictures using objects.

"The philosopher Hans Blumenberg (1920-1996) has, in the quarter-century since his death, become a modern classic in his native Germany, making him one of the most important philosophers of the post-war period. This collection offers an invaluable guide, containing both his most important philosophical essays as well as selections of his non-academic writings that appeared in newspapers and cultural magazines. The topics covered include modernity and secularization, the philosophy of history, the history of science and technology, language philosophy and rhetoricity, aesthetics and literary theory, philosophical anthropology, theology, and mythical thought"--

"Hans Blumenberg has, in the quarter-century since his death, become recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the postwar period. The Readability of the World represents Blumenberg's first full-length demonstration of the metaphorological method he had pioneered twenty years earlier in Paradigms for a Metaphorology. Whereas Blumenberg had confined himself in Paradigms to sketching this future research field, in Readability he applies his method to a single case study: the idea that the world presents itself to human beings as a book. The metaphor of the book of nature has been central to Western interpretations of reality. Beginning with ancient Greek cosmology and ending with the genetic code, Blumenberg traces the changes undergone by this metaphor in order to access the different expectations of reality that it articulates, reflects, and projects"--

From Library Journal "What is the meaning of the infant having to build a distorted symbolic world that in the end has to be discarded and repressed?" The present work seeks to provide a "Freudian-Piagetian synthesis" that shows how this symbol-bound world of free libidinal impulses and object relations is not discarded, but becomes a precondition, a symbolic investment, for interpersonal drives and knowledge acquisition. To Furth (Psychology, Catholic Univ. of America), "the objects of knowledge are objects of intense desire," as shown in the theories of Piaget and in the metapsychology of Freud. This clearly written synthesis will be cited in future references to theories of a knowledge-id connection, and the biological drive theory of human sociability and morality. For academic collections. William Abrams, Portland State Univ. Lib., Ore.Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Originally published in 1969, this book deals extensively with the description and measurement of personality. The results of the Eysencks' work in this field directed new light on the structure of personality and cast doubt on many widely accepted findings of the time.

It is often suggested that the incidence of cancer and coronary heart disease could be much reduced or even eliminated if only people would stop smoking cigarettes and eat fewer high-cholesterol foods. The evidence, however, shows that such views are simplistic and unrealistic and that, instead, cancer and CHD are the product of many risk factors acting synergistically. Psychosocial factors (stress, personality) are six times as predictive as smoking, cholesterol level or blood pressure and much more responsive to prophylactic treatment. This book admits that, while smoking is a risk factor for cancer and CHD, its effects have been exaggerated. A more realistic appraisal of a very complex chain of events incorporating many diverse factors is given, and appropriate action to prevent cancer and coronary heart disease is discussed.

Psychology

Hardcover with dust jacket. Ink underlining and markings throughout. Dust jacket is edge chipped, torn and scuffed. Boards are edge worn and curled.

A major collection of Harlan Ellison's incomparable, troublemaking, uncompromising, confrontational essays plus a foreword by award-winning author Robert Crais.

From a tour of Harlan’s favorite films of the ’40s to an account of the best comics of the ’90s, WHY DO YOU CALL ME ISHMAEL WHEN YOU KNOW MY NAME IS BERNIE? gathers an omnifarious array of Ellisonian essays that use popular culture as a window on sociology and politics, art as an insight into the human soul, and Dashiel Hammett for an English lesson.Most of these essays began life as introductions to one book or another, some made one-off appearances in magazines, and at least one did both! They may have been written for a myriad of reasons, but–at the end of the day–they all offer a look inside the mind of the man who crafted them…a man not named Ishmael…or Bernie…though he has been known to sign books he doesn’t care for as “Herman Melville.”

Ethnomethodology's Program: Working out Durkheim's Aphorism emphasizes Garfinkel's insistence that his position focuses on fundamental sociological issues—and that interpretations of his position as indifferent to sociology have been misunderstandings. Durkheim's aphorism states that the concreteness of social facts is sociology's most fundamental phenomenon. Garfinkel argues that sociologists have, for a century or more, ignored this aphorism and treated social facts as theoretical, or conceptual, constructions. Garfinkel, in this new book, shows how and why sociology must restore Durkheim's aphorism, through an insistence on the concreteness of social facts that are produced by complex social practices enacted by participants in the social order.

Robbins' New York is the world of big business and the men and women who make it big. Honor and decency are nothing in a city where respect is measured by the size of your expense account. And it's the city that Brad Rowan, a man on the make, hopes to conquer on his climb to the top, bringing with him the women he loves, uses, and destroys. Drawing from his own experiences in New York, Robbins vividly portrays our eternal desire for greed, desire, and blind ambition, in this timeless tale of success and struggle in the city that never sleeps.

Loren Hardeman and Angelo Perino are two men united by their shared vision, daring, and arrogance. But Perino committed the unpardonable sin: he had become necessary to Hardeman, having helped him retain control over Bethlehem Motors when his grandson, Loren Hardeman III, made his power grab. Beaten savagely by thugs hired by Loren III, fired abruptly by Loren I, Angelo Perino wed the love of his life and fled to New York. Now Perino and Loren III, still bitter enemies, have forged an uneasy truce that brings Perino back to Bethlehem Motors. Loren III, who falls back on his family's name and money, and Perino, who relies on talent, charisma, and prowess in the bedroom, lock horns once more.

Harold Weisberg was foremost among the early trailblazers who saw the inadequacy of the Warren Report's solution to the Crime of the Century. He tirelessly petitioned the government and used the courts to force release of withheld documents, and wrote dozens of books and manuscripts on the subject, including the Whitewash series, Oswald in New Orleans, PostMortem, Never Again, and Case Open, along with many unpublished manuscripts. He also wrote Frame-Up on the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. Harold died in 2002 at the age of 88. Oswald in New Orleans focuses on the strange 1963 summer of Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans, where his apparent "lone nut" pro-Castro activities have puzzled researchers for many years. This book discusses the many odd stories and colorful personalities of the Oswald-New Orleans scene: Dean Andrews, David Ferrie, Sylvia Odio, Orest Pena, Carlos Bringuier, Loran Hall, and others. Published in the early days of the ill-fated Garrison investigation, it remains an important analysis of those stories and persons. The book is complemented by online materials at www.maryferrell.org, including a 308-page appendix of documents and a "live index" which includes hyperlinks into the document appendix.

From a brilliant and witty comic book aficionado, this “scholarly but lively narrative” ( Kirkus Reviews ) reveals the links between Jews and the iconic superheroes of Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby. Many of us know that the superheroes at the heart of the American comic book industry were created by Jews. But you’d be surprised to learn how much these beloved characters were shaped by the cultural and religious traditions of their makers. Superman Is Jewish? follows the “people of the book” as they become the people of the comic book. With great wit and compelling arguments, Harry Brod situates superheroes within the course of Jewish-American history: they are aliens in a foreign land, like Superman; figures plagued by guilt for abandoning their families, like Spider-Man; and outsiders persecuted for being different, like the X-Men. Brod blends humor and sharp observation as he considers the overt and discreet Jewish characteristics of these well-known figures and explores how their creators integrated their Jewish identities and their creativity. Captivating, poignant, and packed with historical insights, this guided tour travels from the Passover Haggadah’s exciting action scenes of Moses’s superpowers through the Yiddish humor of Mad magazine to two Pulitzer Prizes awarded in one decade to Jewish comic book guys Art Spiegelman and Michael Chabon. “A witty, insightful exposé” ( Publisher’s Weekly ), Superman Is Jewish? is an endlessly fascinating American saga about an immigrant group that used comic books to see itself in new, empowering—and laughable—ways. You don’t even have to be Jewish to get a kick out of it.