Benjamin Appel: 4 books

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,...

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...

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...

The Dark Stain is a novel of tremendous force and vitality. It is a story of lust and hatred and passion . . . nakedly portrayed and in words the meaning of which can escape no one. The locale is Harlem, but what happens in its exciting pages has already been paralleled in many American cities and...