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Some of the material in the \"After\" section is as stark and immediate as the photojournalism from that day. And some posses a wisdom and humanity that is an essential part of moving beyond the events of 9\/11. This single volume is in effect two books, with two covers, a \"before\" and an \"after,\" with a separate introduction for each. It is a powerful document of its time, and, with its vivid and insightful writing, it is also news that will stay news, sometime that will remain an engrossing read long after the events described have receded into the past.   \"Brief and memorable epitomes of the urban encounter: a transporting collection. \"-Kirkus Reviews \"The quality of these pieces is consistently high, and they feel authentic throughout.\"- Publishers Weekly \"Before and After: Stories From New York vividly captures the fissure of a place suddenly and utterly transformed... It's hard to imagine a more appropriate or more moving collection of voices.\"-San Francisco Chronicle \"The essays are gorgeous, alternately sad and funny...[a] richly human collection.\"-Portland Mercury \"Its 60+ stories are all tightly wound and cleanly written... they're emotionally engaging, they're clear, they're direct... It's a heartbreaker of a book.\"-Flakmag.com","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49615239479569,"sku":"GOR007377483","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51327630311697,"sku":"CIN0393323536G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393323536.jpg?v=1751292802"},{"product_id":"seduction-theory-book-thomas-beller-9780393326826","title":"Seduction Theory","description":"In Seduction Theory, Thomas Beller writes of lonely friends and groping lovers, of awkward dates and dreamy yearnings of young adults caught in the lights of modern Manhattan. 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The Sleep-Over Artist is an account of critical stages in Alex's life, mapping his progress from youthful delinquent to filmmaker whose career begins when he makes a documentary film exposing the prep school from which he has been expelled. Alex longs for the taste of family life that the early death of his father has denied him. As a young boy he sleeps over at his friends' houses and ingratiates himself with their families; as a young man he extends his sleep-overs to the lives of women, culminating in the ultimate sleep-over--an affair in England with a glamorous, slightly older woman, the mother of a young boy. Beller has a pitch-perfect ear for emotional nuance and a microscopic eye for rendering the wordless moments when a relationship catches fire and all too often begins to falter. The high-wire tension that electrifies The Sleep-Over Artist is Beller's ingenious portrait of a young man who longs to disappear and belong all at the same time.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49652268499217,"sku":"GOR012891004","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393049256.jpg?v=1751038931"},{"product_id":"how-to-be-a-man-book-thomas-beller-9780393326833","title":"How to Be a Man","description":"Acclaimed fiction writer Thomas Beller digs deep into his own history in this humorous and insightful collection about the state of masculinity. With sharp and engaging eloquence he discourses on T-shirts; being your mother's date at the Academy Awards; life at a bagel factory; the irrational pleasures of old American cars—and the mysterious disappearance of the author's own particular vehicle from a street in downtown Manhattan; love, sex, and breakups in an office environment; the social ecology of street basketball—including the sudden peril befalling a particular court in Manhattan and the heartwarming efforts of previously disparate community members to save it; coaches; the death of a parent; getting over J. D. Salinger; and an attempt to build a complicated piece of furniture for a beloved. Through stints as a bike messenger, a drummer, a boyfriend and—possibly, potentially, finally—a husband, Beller writes about the life-changing effects of love and marriage—past, present, and future.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50104819482897,"sku":"CIN0393326837G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50580028817681,"sku":"CIN0393326837VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52608592576785,"sku":"NLS9780393326833","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52775728087313,"sku":"NIN9780393326833","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393326837.jpg?v=1751007002"},{"product_id":"seduction-theory-book-thomas-beller-9780393037678","title":"Seduction Theory","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50120232829201,"sku":"CIN0393037673G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50323994804497,"sku":"CIN0393037673VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393037673.jpg?v=1750813573"},{"product_id":"lost-in-the-game-book-thomas-beller-9781478018834","title":"Lost in the Game","description":"Capturing the magnificence and mastery of today's most accomplished NBA players while paying homage to the devotion of the countless congregants in the global church of pickup basketball, Thomas Beller charts the game's inexorable gravitational hold on those who love it.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50255827501329,"sku":"CIN1478018836VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51028517650705,"sku":"NIN9781478018834","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52106336436497,"sku":"CIN1478018836G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53250052882705,"sku":"CIN1478018836A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1478018836.jpg?v=1751273388"},{"product_id":"personals-book-thomas-beller-9780395857960","title":"Personals","description":"Here, in a collection by some of America's young writers, are the personal truths of those in their twenties in the 1990s; essays on founding a theatre company, on guarding your virginity, on searching for the perfect job - or the perfect love.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50348957729041,"sku":"CIN0395857961VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50351574122769,"sku":"CIN0395857961A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50351577694481,"sku":"CIN0395857961G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0395857961.jpg?v=1751134496"},{"product_id":"sleep-over-artist-book-thomas-beller-9780393321715","title":"The Sleep-Over Artist","description":"Writing with the sparkling wit and insight of his highly praised debut, Seduction Theory (\"Brilliantly captures the great expectations and recurring ambivalence of youth.\"—The New York Times), Thomas Beller continues to plumb the adventures of his hero, Alex Fader, a youthful existentialist and sensualist with an insatiable appetite for trouble. The Sleep-Over Artist is an account of critical stages in Alex's life, mapping his progress from youthful delinquent to filmmaker whose career begins when he makes a documentary film exposing the prep school from which he has been expelled. Alex longs for the taste of family life that the early death of his father has denied him. As a young boy he sleeps over at his friends' houses and ingratiates himself with their families; as a young man he extends his sleep-overs to the lives of women, culminating in the ultimate sleep-over—an affair in England with a glamorous, slightly older woman, the mother of a young boy. Beller has a pitch-perfect ear for emotional nuance and a microscopic eye for rendering the wordless moments when a relationship catches fire and all too often begins to falter. The high-wire tension that electrifies The Sleep-Over Artist is Beller's ingenious portrait of a young man who longs to disappear and belong all at the same time.    \"Hilarious....captures perfectly the myriad stages of fear, discovery and elation that mark one's first sexual experience.\"—The New York Times Book Review, Katherine Dieckmann, 16 July 2000 \"[W]ell-crafted stories recall the witty phrasing of Updike, the poignant nostalgia of Cheever, the earnest but confused innocence of Salinger.\"—Library Journal \"Featuring a New York that, like Kundera's Prague, is a vast hive of seductions....A moving portrait.\"—Publishers Weekly, 17 April 2000  \"The gentle humor and delicacy of Sleep-Over Artist remind me of the stories of another young cosmopolite, F. Scott Fitzgerald.\"—Stewart O'Nan, author of A Prayer for the Dying \"Fresh, sophisticated and most of all utterly readable...strikes a perfect balance between timely ironies and perennial emotional truths.\"—Eva Hoffman \"Tom Beller is gifted with a wry, dry appreciation of life's sweet and unlikely subtleties.\"—Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation and Bitch \"A fine novel of Manhattan manners.\"—New York Observer","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50351771746577,"sku":"CIN0393321711A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52338165743889,"sku":"NLS9780393321715","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52634527138065,"sku":"CIN0393321711VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52769224392977,"sku":"CIN0393321711G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53340282061073,"sku":"NIN9780393321715","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393321711.jpg?v=1751260303"},{"product_id":"j-d-salinger-book-thomas-beller-9780544261990","title":"J.D. 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Subsequent books introduced a new type in contemporary literature: the introspective, hyperarticulate Glass family, whose stage is the Upper East Side. Yet we still know little about Salinger’s personal life and less about his character.  This was by design. In 1953, determined to escape media attention, Salinger fled to New Hampshire, where he would live until his death in 2010. Even there, privacy proved elusive: a Time cover story; a memoir by Joyce Maynard (who dropped out of Yale as a freshman to move in with him); and a legal battle over an unauthorized biography, which darkened his last decades. Yet he continued to write, and is rumored to have left behind a mass of work that his estate intends to publish.  Thomas Beller, a novelist who grew up in Manhattan, is the ideal guide to Salinger’s world. He gives us a sense of life at The New Yorker (where he was once a staff writer) and a portrait of editor Gus Lobrano, whose relationship with Salinger has rarely been written about. He visits Salinger’s summer camp and the apartment buildings where the author lived. He reads the famous works with obsessive attention, finding in them an image of his own life experience. The result is a quest biography about learning to know yourself in order to know your subject. J.D. Salinger is the triumph of a rare literary form: biography as work of art.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50558570529041,"sku":"GOR013999081","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1477801162.jpg?v=1750955640"},{"product_id":"lost-in-the-game-book-thomas-beller-9781478016175","title":"Lost in the Game","description":"For players, coaches, writers, and fans, basketball is a science and an art, a religious sacrament, a source of entertainment, and a way of interacting with the world. In Lost in the Game Thomas Beller entwines these threads with his lifetime's experience as a player and journalist, roaming NBA locker rooms and city parks as a basketball flaneur in search of the meaning of the modern game. He captures the magnificence and mastery of today’s most accomplished NBA players while paying homage to the devotion of countless congregants in the global church of pickup basketball. He shares his own stories from the courts, meditating on basketball’s role in city life and its impact on the athlete’s psyche as he moves from youth to middle age. Part journalistic account, part memoir of a slightly talented player whose main gift is being tall, Lost in the Game charts the game’s inexorable gravitational hold on those who love it.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51295579832593,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51295581339921,"sku":"NIN9781478016175","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1478016175.jpg?v=1751339083"},{"product_id":"lost-and-found-book-thomas-beller-9780393331912","title":"Lost and Found","description":"Acclaimed fiction writer Thomas Beller culls a new volume of essays, vignettes, and tales of the city from the literary Web site Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, one of the premier venues for the urban sketch on the Internet. Lost and Found, Volume II of the series, is a mosaic of voices, drawing on the diverse experiences of such New Yorkers as a frequent patron of Manhattan sex clubs, a diamond dealer on 47th Street, and a doorman on the Upper East Side. The book features many exciting new voices (Said Sayrafiezadeh, Rachel Sherman, Bryan Charles) alongside work by well-known writers, including Phillip Lopate, Jonathan Ames, Alicia Erian, Madison Smartt Bell, and Edmund White.   Taken together, the essays, reportage, and vignettes in Lost and Found are a testament to the vitality, diversity, and complexity of New York City, a reflection of the churning thoughts, wishes, and fantasies of the myriad faces on the city’s streets.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51332914118929,"sku":"CIN0393331911G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393331911.jpg?v=1750975580"},{"product_id":"marschen-und-moore-book-thomas-beller-9783734766435","title":"Marschen und Moore","description":"Kleine Bildmeditationen aus den Dithmarscher und Steinburger Mooren.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52472203673873,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52472204525841,"sku":"NLS9783734766435","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9783734766435.jpg?v=1759837724"},{"product_id":"beim-betrachten-des-verschwindens-book-thomas-beller-9783833482663","title":"Beim Betrachten des Verschwindens","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52483490382097,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52483491627281,"sku":"NLS9783833482663","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9783833482663.jpg?v=1759854800"},{"product_id":"degas-at-the-gas-station-book-thomas-beller-9781478033035","title":"Degas at the Gas Station","description":"In his latest essay collection, Thomas Beller trains his piercing literary eye on how a single, seismic event indelibly shapes the trajectory of the common and mundane experiences of one’s life. Weaving together a charming set of autobiographical stories, Beller interrogates the randomness and contingencies that separate sadness from joy, death from life. His father escaped the Nazis, only to die in America from cancer when Beller was nine years old. Beller measures how his loss impacted his life as the father of two young children and became a catalyst for understanding and an ever-present sorrow. At the same time, ordinary moments - from retrieving an iPod from the subway tracks or encountering the police at a Kinks concert to observing his young tutued ballerina daughter at a gas station - lead to instances of penetrating insight, self-deprecation, and flashes of humor. Degas at the Gas Station presents an endearing and bracingly honest portrait of the author as an ever-curious observer of the mysteries and profundities of everyday life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52569009062161,"sku":"NIN9781478033035","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53133700497681,"sku":"CIN1478033037G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781478033035.jpg?v=1760780235"},{"product_id":"degas-at-the-gas-station-book-thomas-beller-9781478029571","title":"Degas at the Gas Station","description":"In his latest essay collection, Thomas Beller trains his piercing literary eye on how a single, seismic event indelibly shapes the trajectory of the common and mundane experiences of one’s life. 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