Joseph Epstein: 19 books

Malice that cannot speak its name, cold-blooded but secret hostility, impotent desire, hidden rancor and spite--all cluster at the center of envy. Envy clouds thought, writes Joseph Epstein, clobbers generosity, precludes any hope of serenity, and ends in shriveling the heart. Of the seven deadly...

Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? Joseph Epstein would surely be at the top of anybody's list. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. Joseph...

Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? Joseph Epstein would surely be at the top of anybody’s list. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. Joseph...

Who invented the personal essay? That is hard to say. The ancient Roman philosopher and cynical power broker, Seneca? The 16th century French philosopher Montaigne certainly brought it to a peak of perfection. There were many 19th century masters, not so many after that. Who is the greatest...

This delightful book of writer-to-writer correspondence joins a full shelf of volumes in the genre, yet it is perhaps the first set of such letters ever transacted via the Internet. Also unusual, at least for correspondents in the twenty-first century, is that Frederic Raphael and Joseph Epstein...

The amusing and erudite anatomy of modern friendship, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Snobbery. Is it possible to have too many friends? Is your spouse supposed to be your best friend? How far should you go to help a friend in need? And how do you end a friendship that has run...

A look at the delights—and dangers—of gossip, from a New York Times–bestselling, “erudite writer, gifted with rare insight and a wry sense of humor” (USA Today). Gossip is no trivial matter. In this enlightening and entertaining study, the author of Snobbery takes a look at a human...

Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? Unquestionably Joseph Epstein. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. How easy it is today to forget...

In his first collection of stories since Fabulous Small Jews, Joseph Epstein delivers all the pleasures his readers have come to expect: stories of ordinary men confronting the moments that define a life, told with the bittersweet humor and loving irony encompassed in the title of the book. These...

Observations on the many ways we manage to look down on others, from “a writer who can make you laugh out loud on every third page” (The New York Times Book Review). Snobs are everywhere. At the gym, at work, at school, and sometimes even lurking in your own home. But how did we, as a culture,...

Witty, “utterly compelling” short stories about Jewish men of a certain age, by the New York Times–bestselling author of Snobbery (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review). Set in Chicago and populated by characters ranging from lawyers and professors to scrap metal dealers, this collection...

The estimable Joseph Epstein—essayist, past editor of The American Scholar, and recipient of the 2003 National Humanities Medal along with Hal Holbrook and John Updike—brings together twenty short stories in his first such collection since 2010. Most, though not all, of the stories are set in...

In this collection, his twenty-fifth book, Joseph Epstein departs from writing about literature and culture to indulge his fondness for the world of sport in all its forms. In these essays and stories on such subjects as saving Joe DiMaggio’s reputation from the clutches of an iconoclastic biographer,...

Alexis de Tocqueville was among the first foreigners to recognize and trumpet the grandness of the American project. His two-volume classic, Democracy in America, published in 1835, not only offered a vivid account of what was then a new nation but famously predicted what that nation would become....