A novel narrated by octogenarian ex-sportswriter Word Smith, who plans to write the "Great American Novel" and also to tell the tragic and hilarious story of the Ruppert Mundys - the only homeless baseball team ever to play in the big league, who have disappeared from all official histories.

"In the works for sixteen years, The Complete Works of Primo Levi is the most ambitious literary translation of the twenty-first century. Primo Levi, the Italian-born chemist once described by Philip Roth as that "quicksilver little woodland creature enlivened by the forest's astute intelligence," has largely been considered a heroic figure in the annals of twentieth-century literature for If This Is a Man, his haunting account of Auschwitz. Yet Levi's body of work extends considerably beyond his experience as a survivor. Now, the transformation of Levi from Holocaust memoirist to one of the twentieth century's greatest writers culminates in this magisterial publication of The Complete Works of Primo Levi, which, twenty-eight years after his premature death in Turin, finally collects all of Levi's fourteen books--memoirs, essays, poetry, and fiction--into three slip-cased volumes, along with new translations, one revised by the original translator, and an introduction by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison. The appearance of this historic publication will occasion a major reappraisal of "one of the most valuable writers of our time" (Alfred Kazin)" --

2025 World Fantasy Award Finalist An apprentice assassin and an inquisitive linguist trade interwoven tales in order to enact revenge. Ukrainian author R. B. Lemberg (The Four Profound Weaves) returns to their legendary Birdverse in an ode to the transformative power of storytelling. " Haunting, nuanced, and hopeful, Yoke of Stars is essential reading. " -- Izzy Wasserstein, author of These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart In the School of Assassins, Stone Orphan waits for a first assignment. After their first kill, they will graduate and attain the coveted cloth of bone. But instead of a commission, Stone Orphan gets an inquisitive linguist, Ulín. Ulín has heard the Orphan Star's song of despair, mirroring her own, and drawing her to the School of Assassins. But Ulín is far more interested in learning Stone Orphan's language than deciding whom she wishes to kill. Unable to contain their curiosity, Stone Orphan offers to exchange stories with Ulín to help her decide the fate of three men. By turns, Stone Orphan and Ulín narrate tales of love, suffering, exile, and self-determination, and two wounded souls find hope in each other through the radical act of listening.

How has a legal tradition determined by men affected the lives of women? What are the traditional Jewish views of marriage, divorce, sexuality, contraception, abortion? 'Women and Jewish Law' gives contemporary readers access to the central texts of the Jewish religious tradition on issues of special concern to women. Combining a historical overview with a thoughtful feminist critique, this pathbreaking study points the way for "informal change" in the status of women in Jewish life.

This wide-ranging discussion of Jews and Arabs, Judaism and Islam, is historical, psychological, and anthropological in approach. By focusing his study on folk culture, Raphael Patai makes a unique contribution, complementing classic works in the field. The volume is a distillation of the best available material on the subject of Jewish-Arab interactions over the ages. It provides an excellent overview of Arab-Jewish relations vis-a-vis religion, theology, culture, literature, and politics from the pre-Muhammad period to the present day, showing the shared heritage as well as divergence of Arab and Jew. Winner of the Jewish Book Council Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Award in Race Relations.

"First University of Illinois Press ed.""An Illini book." Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-222) and index.

Simple puzzles as well as more complex mysteries of logic and meaning are offered by such interesting characters as Dracula and various zombies, werewolves, knights and knaves

"The most original, most profound, and most humorous collection of recreational logic and math problems ever written." -- Martin Gardner, "Scientific American ""The value of the book lies in the wealth of ingenious puzzles. They afford amusement, vigorous exercise, and instruction." -- Willard Van Orman Quine, "The New York Times Book Review "If you're intrigued by puzzles and paradoxes, these 200 mind-bending logic puzzles, riddles, and diversions will thrill you with challenges to your powers of reason and common sense. Raymond M. Smullyan -- a celebrated mathematician, logician, magician, and author -- presents a logical labyrinth of more than 200 increasingly complex problems. The puzzles delve into Godel's undecidability theorem and other examples of the deepest paradoxes of logic and set theory. Detailed solutions follow each puzzle.

A sensual love story, drawing on Plato and Spinoza to examine the conflicting claims of reason and desire.Eva Mueller, a professor of Plato and Spinoza at a small college, undertakes the philosophical education of Michael Fields, who is handsome, clever, and only twenty.

Was he New York City’s last pirate . . . or its first gangster? This is the true story of the bloodthirsty underworld legend who conquered Manhattan, dock by dock—for fans of Gangs of New York and Boardwalk Empire . “History at its best . . . I highly recommend this remarkable book.”—Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lost City of the Monkey God Handsome and charismatic, Albert Hicks had long been known in the dive bars and gin joints of the Five Points, the most dangerous neighborhood in maritime Manhattan. For years, he operated out of the public eye, rambling from crime to crime, working on the water in ships, sleeping in the nickel-a-night flops, drinking in barrooms where rat-baiting and bear-baiting were great entertainments. His criminal career reached its peak in 1860, when he was hired, under an alias, as a hand on an oyster sloop. His plan was to rob the ship and flee, disappearing into the teeming streets of lower Manhattan, as he’d done numerous times before, eventually finding his way back to his nearsighted Irish immigrant wife (who, like him, had been disowned by her family) and their infant son. But the plan went awry—the ship was found listing and unmanned in the foggy straits of Coney Island—and the voyage that was to enrich him instead led to his last desperate flight. Long fascinated by gangster legends, Rich Cohen tells the story of this notorious underworld figure, from his humble origins to the wild, globe-crossing, bacchanalian crime spree that forged his ruthlessness and his reputation, to his ultimate incarnation as a demon who terrorized lower Manhattan, at a time when pirates anchored off 14th Street.

A liberal state is a representative democracy constrained by the rule of law. Richard Posner argues for a conception of the liberal state based on pragmatic theories of government. He views the actions of elected officials as guided by interests rather than by reason and the decisions of judges by discretion rather than by rules. He emphasises the institutional and material, rather than moral and deliberative, factors in democratic decision making. The great advantage of democracy is not that it is the rule of the wise or the good but that it enables stability and orderly succession in government and limits the tendency of rulers to enrich or empower themselves to the disadvantage of the public. Posner's theory steers between political theorists' concept of deliberative democracy on the left and economists' public-choice theory on the right.

In this book, Richard A. Posner examines how judges go about making difficult decisions. Posner argues that they cannot rely on either logic or science, but must fall back on a grab bag of informal methods of reasoning that owe less than one might think to legal training and experience. -- Adapted from Amazon.com summary

Bestselling author Richard Elliott Friedman, whose Who Wrote the Bible? was an intriguing took at the origins of the Bible, takes on another momentous theme for the third millennium "to point the way toward a possible final reconciliation of science and religion and to provide the basis for a new moral code acceptable to believers and nonbelievers alike" (Cleveland Plain Dealer). Remarkably readable, this inspiring work explores three interlinking mysteries: the amazing fact that in the Bible God gradually becomes more hidden; the eerie connection between Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, who arrived at the idea of "the death of God" almost concurrently -- but independent of one another; and the extraordinary cosmic parallel between the big bang theory and the mystlcism of the Kabbalah. Bible Review hailed this book as "brilliant, an elegant and learned reflection on one of the central mysteries or the Bible and of modern life."

Written by an esteemed scholar and the editor of the History of Western Philosophy (Columbia, 1999), this is the latest addition to Oneworld's popular Philosophers series. Readable, yet based on solid scholarly knowledge and historical insight, Popkin's concise and coherent introduction outlines not only the works of the 17th-century Jewish philosopher, but also his context and his lasting influence. Explaining the key themes of Spinoza's greatest work, Ethics, Popkin elaborates on his theories on religion and his political thought, as well as his theories of mind, emotion and freedom, currently very popular with general readers of science and philosophy.

On the road with the Blank Generation, Go Now takes readers on a wild trip across the country and into the head of a down-on-his-luck punk musician. Billy, a burnt-out, drug- and sex-addicted punk musician, sets out with his erstwhile French girlfriend, Chrissa, on a cross-country writing assignment that turns into a ricocheting, brain-searing, agonizing head trip.

Recognized as America's most original philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was a practicing scientist, a logician, and a student of medieval philosophy and the history of science.

Cleverly Comical Animal Jokes is designed for readers 8-11 years young, who love animals and humor. Inside its pages are more than 500 animal jokes that are guaranteed to make readers howl, twitter, yip, and yelp with lots of laughter. Everybody loves animal jokes: Duck jokes quack you up. Porcupine jokes are to-the-point. Elephant jokes are worth the weight. Skunk jokes are real stinkers, and kangaroo jokes are best by leaps and bounds The co-authors, Richard Lederer and Jim Ertner, have both been elected International Punster of the Year, and Jim McLean’s delightful illustrations add to the fun.

Comic book collectors relive the Golden Days, as they recall their favorite childhood comic heroes in this sequel to All in Color for a Dime. This reprint from the 1973 Arlington House original sports a new introduction from Lupoff and Comics Buyer's Guide editor Maggie Thompson. The Comic-Book Book is an entertaining and evocative excursion into memory land and an important contribution to the study of pop culture.

Once there was a child without a friend. Ben-Zion's father insisted that his son speak only Hebrew, considered by some as the language of angels. But in the 1880s, the Jewish people who lived in Jerusalem spoke Yiddish or the languages of the places where they grew up. Hebrew hadn't been in everyday use for more than two thousand years, and adults said it could never be revived.