Brain Guy rips the lid off New York’s underworld—a trip-hammer novel about a gang killer in Hell’s kitchen and the expensive women who took him to the top.
Benjamin Appel is of that rare species, a native New Yorker. Born in 1907, he was raised in the tough, Hell’s-kitchen district of the West 50’s. Like any other kid in a tough city neighborhood, he had to fight for his self-respect as a human being. At De Witt Clinton high school he was a football, crew, and track star. After graduation, he entered the University of Pennsylvania but later transferred to New York University and then Lafayette. He took a post-graduate course at Columbia. While at Lafayette, he published his first book, a volume of verse. Since then he has written five books and has had more than one hundred short stories published. His books are a study of American crime and lawlessness, beginning with small-time holdups, going on to crime as an organized monopoly, emphasizing it in prostitution, labor racketeering, and finally, crime organized into native fascism. He has held a variety of jobs - bank clerk, factory hand, farm hand, lumberjack, tenement house inspector, professional fisherman. Until recently, when he was called to Washington, D.C. to take a position with the OCD, he was employed as a workman in the plant of the Republic Aviation Corporation on Long Island. He is married and has one daughter. His best-known books are Brain Guy, People Talk, Run Around, and Power House. (1943)
The Death and Life of State Repression addresses a problem that dates back at least 75 years, if not before. Since World War II, individuals and institutions from around the world have been concerned with state repression/human rights violations and since about 1990, a robust empirical literature has emerged to investigate what drives this behavior up or down (i.e., exploring variation). While useful, this work has generally ignored important aspects of the "Death/Life cycle" of state repression: i.e., its onset, escalation, termination and recurrence. Such an approach is important because different explanations and policies might be relevant for different parts of the cycle. Exploring a new database of repressive spells from 1976-2006 and new theory regarding spells, The Death and Life of State Repression breaks new ground in a variety of different ways. The book argues that repression is a sticky process that is largely slow-moving and non-adaptive. Consequently, change in this behavior is rare unless the ruling cohort is perturbed in some manner. What perturbs is somewhat surprising. The authors do not argue or find support for the predominant variables/policies advanced by the international community (i.e., naming/shaming, international law, military intervention and economic sanctions). Rather, their research advances and finds that political democratization plays a crucial role in reducing and stopping most aspects of repressive spells, and democratization itself is influenced by non-violent direct action. The book has major implications for those who wish to study state repression, as well as those who have an interest in trying to reduce and stop it from occurring across the Death/Life cycle. The path to less repressive behavior has never been clearer.
It’s coming . . . the pleasure state! In this biting and satiric novel, a major American writer looks forward to the day - surely not far away - when machines have taken over all productive work, the government consists of a battery of Thinking Machines, and the people are turned loose on a perpetual spree. Visit Atomic Amusement Park (and don’t miss the Proton-Neutron Tunnel of Love!) . . . try Russo-Playo, the spy game played with real bullets! . . . See Paris and Tokyo, the exotic “fun cities” built in Miami, Florida. For this is the America of the Future, a whole country transformed into one gigantic playland. Everybody calls it “The Funhouse” - and why not? It’s Heaven on Earth . . . Isn’t it?
Joey Kasow is a skinny Jewish kid growing up in the 1920s in Hell’s Kitchen. Tormented by the Irish thugs in the neighborhood, he eventually gains their begrudging respect and is allowed to join their gang, the Badgers. Joey grows up tough. He knows he got to take whatever is dished out to him to stay in the gang. He learns how to inflict pain—he learns how to kill. And gradually he works his way up the ladder to become the Spotter’s enforcer. He is now Joey Case. But Joey can’t escape his past, falling in love with innocent young Sadie Madofsky, his refuge from the brutal world around him. All Joey want is to get ahead—but the Spotter had other plans for him.
A holy man in an unholy bind William Kaspar was not your everday sinner. Quite the reverse. William had renounced the pleasures of the flesh. He had quelled his ambitions and appetites. He had donned the robes of a Buddhist monk to search for Nirvana in the human jungle of New York. But when a beautiful woman led him all the way into temptation . . . when a goatish sailor became his guide through the lower depths of depravity . . . when the Evil One Himself gave William one diabolical change to save the entire earth from destruction . . . William had to say yes . . .
The Death and Life of State Repression addresses a problem that dates back at least 75 years, if not before. Since World War II, individuals and institutions from around the world have been concerned with state repression/human rights violations and since about 1990, a robust empiricalliterature has emerged to investigate what drives this behavior up or down (i.e., exploring variation). While useful, this work has generally ignored important aspects of the "Death/Life cycle" of state repression: i.e., its onset, escalation, termination and recurrence. Such an approach isimportant because different explanations and policies might be relevant for different parts of the cycle. Exploring a new database of repressive spells from 1976-2006 and new theory regarding spells, The Death and Life of State Repression breaks new ground in a variety of different ways.The book argues that repression is a sticky process that is largely slow-moving and non-adaptive. Consequently, change in this behavior is rare unless the ruling cohort is perturbed in some manner. What perturbs is somewhat surprising. The authors do not argue or find support for the predominantvariables/policies advanced by the international community (i.e., naming/shaming, international law, military intervention and economic sanctions). Rather, their research advances and finds that political democratization plays a crucial role in reducing and stopping most aspects of repressivespells, and democratization itself is influenced by non-violent direct action. The book has major implications for those who wish to study state repression, as well as those who have an interest in trying to reduce and stop it from occurring across the Death/Life cycle. The path to less repressivebehavior has never been clearer.
The study of ancient Judaism has enjoyed a steep rise in interest and publications in recent decades, although the focus has often been on the ideas and beliefs represented in ancient Jewish texts rather than on the daily lives and the material culture of Jews/Judaeans and their communities. The nascent institution of the synagogue formed an increasingly important venue for communal gathering and daily or weekly practice. This collection of essays brings together a broad spectrum of new archaeological and textual data with various emergent theories and interpretative methods in order to address the need to understand the place of the synagogue in the daily and weekly procedures, community frameworks, and theological structures in which Judaeans, Galileans, and Jewish people in the Diaspora lived and gathered. The interdisciplinary studies will be of great significance for anyone studying ancient Jewish belief, practice, and community formation.
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