Bücher von David Perlstein

Early in the twentieth century, three children of poor Jewish immigrants stagger beneath the grueling promise of the American Dream.Nate Cohen, the pint-size, angry son of an alcoholic San Francisco prizefighter and Bohemian mother, becomes a parttime criminal. Working at a restaurant, he hurls bacon grease at an anti-Semitic employee and flees the city. As Ned Christianson, he cooks on cattle ranches in Northern California and Wyoming. After sleeping with a rancher's daughter, Ned joins a Wild West show.Kayleh Rubenstein, a red-headed tailor's daughter, becomes the child vaudeville star Clara Robbins. Her Uncle Henry (Zeev) manages her then sells her contract to a vaudeville star who abuses her and, when she finally resists, destroys her career. Clara descends into liquor and morphine.Jake Orlinsky, a New York orphan, performs as the child-magician Joseph Hartwig in a saloon below a brothel. After losing his job, he picks pockets and entertains on the street. Harry Houdini briefly befriends him. Following a fatal run-in at a New York nightclub, Jake escapes to California.The three young performers, all hiding their Jewish identities, meet at San Francisco's 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Clara and Joseph have a brief affair. All go south to Los Angeles, ultimately seeking careers in silent films.Through the ex-gunfighter and lawman Wyatt Earp, Ned and Joseph are hired for a western-and get fired. Clara becomes the kept woman of a series of Hollywood executives and is raped at the home of Fatty Arbuckle. A murder prompts Ned and Joseph to leave Los Angeles. A suicide sends Clara north.They reunite in San Francisco where two violent events lead to tragedy and redemption.

After its second revolution, America is nothing-and everything-to joke about. The U.S.A. is history. In 2044, the Covenantal States of America constitutes a white-Christian autocracy echoing George Orwell's banned classic, 1984. Washington pushes back against armed rebels, humor ridiculing tyranny and mushrooming graffiti referencing Orwell's novel in the form of 2084. Sam Klein, a member of the Minyan, a clandestine group of stand-up comics, organizes a July Fourth comedy protest while his Indian-American wife Indira, a native Californian, faces deportation. The Fourth, celebrating an America made great yet again, brings unexpected fireworks.

An astronaut turning eighty suffers a disturbing encounter. A hard-charging lawyer levitates. Satan makes a cruel wager with God. America bans stand-up comedy. Thus begins a journey toward self-discovery, concluding with four childhood friends taking a road trip fifty years after the last time they were all together and laying their relationships bare.Twenty-five stories set in California, Oregon, New York, Israel and India examine ambition, loss, friendship, parenthood, memory and aging to consider elusive-and often painful-truths.