Benny Cooperman's favourite lunch counter and diner have closed down and the fittings have been sold to Americans. The nation mourns the accidental death of its greatest artist, cellist Dermot Keogh. It's April and there's already a heat wave. Things are just not the way they used to be. Alas, not just the plots and settings have changed in Howard Engel's 10th Benny Cooperman mystery. While Canada's favourite fictional detective is still his smart-alecky but unsophisticated self ("Dim Sum may be unknown in Grantham, Mr. Cooperman, but we in Toronto have had it for nearly forty years"), his talents seem washed out, if not washed up, in this nasty little mystery set in the high-tech, high-pressure world of a Toronto TV station far up the road from his native Grantham. All the stock figures are the former high school love goddess who calls at the detective's office wondering if she's in the path of a killer, the small-town lawyer, the slobbish cops, the heavies in dark glasses. What's missing are the gritty small-town ambience and naked class antagonisms that drive best hard-boiled detective fiction, including Engel's early novels. Burdened with the bland homogeneity of the contemporary city and with convoluted literary references, the tale becomes progressively less gripping. In fact Cooperman hasn't been himself since 1990's Dead and Buried , when his creator first fell for the suits and the happy ending. The warning of his first sentence--"I should have seen the writing on the wall"--should have been a message to readers as well. --Robyn Gillam

Beloved private eye Benny Cooperman is ready to hang up his gumshoes after an attack leaves him with lingering memory problems. But then an old chum goes missing Hot on the trail of Jake Grange, a schoolfriend who ran a scuba diving business, Benny heads to Murinam, an exotic place with the feel and look of a former French colony. There, Benny encounters a bon-vivant priest, a pretty marine biologist, and an eccentric Englishman in search of kosher food. Of course any of these charming locals could be responsible for Jake's disappearance. But when dead bodies start to appear under the sunny tropical skies, Benny knows he must be getting somewhere. With its sure-footed plot and trademark wry humour, "East of Suez" proves to be one of Benny Cooperman's most memorable cases."

Benny Cooperman is a detective with flair, known and loved the world over as a witty, egg salad-loving, Jewish gentleman sleuth. This kinder, gentler detective-funny, smart, and squeamish about violence-is the creation of master of the genre Howard Engel, and readers stretch now to thirteen countries, from his native Canada to Japan, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and the US.

Benny Cooperman, the working-stiff private eye, is back, this time trying to sort out the kerfuffle surrounding the plumbing, a dead old woman, and a crooked politician. It all starts with a noisy toilet. Benny's janitor, Kogan, is too preoccupied with the death of his girlfriend, Lizzy Oldridge, an elderly woman who appears to have starved to death. Lizzy may have died hungry, but she had plenty of money, and somehow former alderman and mayoralty candidate Thurleigh Ramsden, an unsavoury character if there ever was one, has gained control of it. As Benny gets enmeshed in the case the body count increases alarmingly--but what's happened with the plumbing? Book 8 in the Benny Cooperman Mystery series.

Is global capitalism on its last legs? Is the era of American leadership over? Has the West begun a decline into a new Dark Age? Does American civilization deserve to survive? These are the unnerving questions raised by the Great Crash of 2009. This book presents a radically new answer, insisting that global society has only begun to realize its full potential. Author HowardBloom argues that there's a hidden mandate beneath the surface of capitalism: "It's struggling to whisper and rumble its message to you and me. That hidden imperative can lift us from economic crisis, can make us a leader in the next-generation economy, and can dramatically upgrade our ability to empower our fellow human beings." Bloom sees crisis as opportunity, opportunity for the whole human race.In more than eighty short, fast chapters, insights appear suddenly, like the quick bursts of flashbulbs, taking the reader on a sweeping tour of human history, from the Stone Age to the present. Every chapter conveys a radically new way to see the astonishing mechanism we call "Western Civilization." Bloom marvels at how humans have turned toxic waste into food and fuel, trash into treasure, and garbage into gold. He shows how we've produced material miracles based on immaterial things-passion, persistence, and fantasy. He shows that what many regard as the end is just the beginning. The beginning of something you've never before imagined. The author explains why the secret to capitalism's next great leap does not lie in new financial tricks, but in tapping things right under our noses in radically new ways-that is, tapping our imagination, our desire to feel useful, our desire to help others, and our desire to be recognized for contributing to the welfare of humanity. The key to next-generation capitalism lies in a big-picture view that's utterly unlike anything you've previously perceived. A big-picture view that will startle you. A big-picture view with which you can ignite the world, get a new handle on your life, and help transform society. This brilliant, inspirational work of daring ideas and breathtaking research offers more than hope. It offers unseen levels of understanding. Understanding that can literally redefine what it means to be a human being.

Noted folklorist Howard Schwartz retells 12 Jewish tales from around the world. Each tale combines elements of magic with a link to a Jewish holiday, giving new perspectives on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah, Purim, and Passover--plus Shabbat, the weekly Sabbath. These memorable stories of holiday miracles and miraculous escapes have been passed down orally for thousands of years. Now the best of them--from "A Flock of Angels" to "The Enchanted Menorah" and "The Magic Winecup"--have been collected, and enriched by Monique Passicot's luminous illustrations.

In these pieces taken from the first 10 years of Stone's Weekly, he chronicles an era of political suppression, apathy, cold war and the arms race. Looking back, we see how America has changed and how deep are the roots of problems still confronting it today.

"A broad panorama in brilliant prose." -- American Historical Review In this groundbreaking work of labor history, Irving Bernstein uncovers a period when industrial trade unionism, working-class power, and socialism became the rallying cry for millions of workers in the fields, mills, mines, and factories of America. With an introduction by Frances Fox Piven.

An anthology of poetry that captures the spirit of Jewish life during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

"To confront American culture is to feel oneself encircled by a thin but strong presence. I call it Emersonian, an imprecise term but one that directs us to a dominant spirit in the national experience." Thus Irving Howe, America's distinguished social critic and a longtime reader of the Sage of Concord, begins this illuminating discussion of Emerson and his disciples and doubters. What is the Emersonian spirit? What inspired it, what propelled it? And what does it mean to us today? History gave Emerson his opportunity and then took it away. Coming to manhood during the 1830s and 1840s, the time of "the newness" when Americans beheld the world with unbounded expectations, Emerson became the spokesman for the self-reliant new man he believed had arisen, ready to thrust aside mossy traditions and launch a new revolution of freewheeling thought. But the rapid pace of the American experience overtook the Emersonian vision; in the 1850s, the rising problems of slavery, a boom-and-bust economy, the vulgarity of mass culture overwhelmed the idealist. His satellite spirits wavered and shrouded the Emersonian optimism: Hawthorne, with his stories of moral breakdown; Thoreau, rooted in nature yet inclined to the cranky and fanatical; Melville, his fathomless blackness waiting beneath archetypal fables of innocence and evil also Walt Whitman, Orestes Brownson, Twain--all were influenced by, yet reacted against, the Emersonian "newness." Howe identifies three kinds of response: the literature of work (Melville and Mark Twain), the literature of Edenic fraternity (James Fenimore Cooper, Whitman, Twain again), and the literature of loss (all the post-Civil War writers). He lays before us the intellectual and personal tragedy of the first great American man of letters, yet also shows that Emerson's belief in the untapped power of free men pervades not only the lives and works of his contemporaries but is also a permanent part of the American psyche.

A collection of stories exploring the dangerous and difficulty Jewish family life and culture during the late 19th and early 20th century in Europe. Yiddish was the language they spoke.

All essays in this volume are reprinted from the Magazine of fantasy and science fiction.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

"Sir Isaiah Berlin here explores the world and the ideas of a man he calls the Enlightenment's "most passionate, consistent, extreme, and implacable enemy," a philosopher whom he considers perhaps the only "wholly original critic of modern times." J.G. Hamann was an eccentric Prussian thinker of the eighteenth century whose peculiar and difficult work was cherished by Kant, Goethe, and other luminaries, yet to the twentieth century this self-styled Magus of the North is all but unknown." "With his customary eloquence and insight, Berlin penetrates to the heart of Hamann's concerns and shows how important they are to modern life - ideas about creativity, the nature of language and thought, human knowledge, secular and spiritual authority. Though Hamann opposed the values we think of as modern - rationalist, secular individualism - and he lived his life in poverty and neglect, his visionary pietism and skeptical empiricism, Berlin argues - his genius - deserve attention and respect."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This cookbook is written by a doctor who suffered and survived esophageal cancer. Through treatment he eventually lost his teeth. The book is directed to those that go through the uncomfortable process of loosing their teeth and offers them the best of fine eating as well as comfort and hope during this transitional time.

"Phoning Home is a collection of entertaining and thought-provoking essays featuring the author's quirky family, his Jewish heritage, and his New York City upbringing. Jacob M. Appel's recollections and insights, informed and filtered by his advanced degrees in medicine, law, and ethics, not only inspire nostalgic feelings but also offer insight into contemporary medical and ethical issues. At times sardonic and at others self-deprecating, Appel lays bare the most private aspects of his emotional life. "We'd just visited my grandaunt in Miami Beach, the last time we would ever see her. I had my two travel companions, Fat and Thin, securely buckled into the backseat of my mother's foul-tempered Dodge Dart," writes Appel of his family vacation with his two favorite rubber cat toys. Shortly thereafter Fat and Thin were lost forever--beginning, when Appel was just six years old, what he calls his "private apocalypse." Both erudite and full-hearted, Appel recounts storylines ranging from a bout of unrequited love gone awry to the poignant romance of his grandparents. We learn of the crank phone calls he made to his own family, the conspicuous absence of Jell-O at his grandaunt's house, and family secrets long believed buried. The stories capture the author's distinctive voice--a blend of a physician's compassion and an ethicist's constant questioning. "--