"When Molly Wizenberg married Brandon Pettit, she vowed always to support him, to work with him to make their hopes and dreams real. She evinced enthusiasm about Brandon's enthusiasms: building a violin, building a boat, and opening an ice cream store--none of which came to pass. So when Brandon started making plans to open a pizza restaurant, Molly felt sure that the restaurant would join the list of Brandon's abandoned projects. When she finally realized that Delancey really was going to happen, that Brandon was going to change all of her assumptions about what their married life would be like, it was too late. She faced the first crisis in their young marriage. Opening a restaurant is not like hosting a dinner party every night. Molly and Brandon's budget was small, and the tasks at hand were often overhwelming. They had to find a space they could afford, gut renovate it themselves, find second-hand furniture and equipment, build what furniture they couldn't find, buy and install a wood-burning oven, pass health inspections, hire staff, and establish a billing and payroll system. They lost a financial partner. Their cook disappeared the day they opened. Still, their restaurant was a success, and Molly managed to convince herself that she was happy in their new life. Until Halloween night, when she was forced to admit she could no longer pretend. While Delancey is a funny and frank look at behind-the-scenes restaurant life, it is also a bravely honest and moving portrait of a tender young marriage and two partners who had to find out how to let each other go in order to come together"--

Delancey Street in New York conjures up an entire world of Yiddishkeit, "Thequality of being Jewish; the Jewish way of life or its customs and practices."Delancey, and the streets that cross it in the Lower East Side-Ludlow, Essex,Orchard, Rivington, and its "sister" street to the north, Houston Street-are thehistorical home of Jewish immigrants and thus a cradle of that unique Jewishexperience. All the foods that were brought to America in the early 20th century by Jews duringthe great emigration from Europe came to the Lower East Side: knishes, bagels, lox,pastrami, whitefish, dill pickles, kasha, herring (in multiple variations), egg creams,and much more. It is an area that continues to undergo rapid change but EatingDelancey hopes to capture forever the Jewish cuisine of the Lower East Side. Eating Delanceyis a compilation of gorgeous photographs of classic Jewish food, with profiles and receipes from classic LES Jewish eateries such as Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse, Russ & Daughters Appetizers, Katz's Delicatessen, Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery, and Ratner's. These are complimented by celebrity reminiscences from Bette Midler, Jackie Mason, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Don Rickles, Fyvush Finkel, Isaac Mizrahi, Lou Reed, Arthur Schwartz and Milton Glaser.

Spring 196-, on the campus of the U of C and D--, in crumbling World War II barracks foreshadowing Vietnam -- incoming freshman are driven by testosterone, fear, and a dim sense of obligation to become "men." Draft boards close in. Beautiful co-eds drift doe-eyed under the pine trees on the Quadrangle, circled by upper-class Jocks like so many sharks. Professors profess from the pulpits of various disciplines, a neon mermaid throbs in the night sky at the apex of the L-shaped business district, and the latest Girl of the Month appears like clockwork in brazen glory on the wall above Roger Osborn's Love Candle. In the midst of such perils, what chance has a late bloomer like The Gnat? A budding misanthrope in a black raincoat like Martin Calihan? An accidental housemother like nubile Susan Thurlby -- or a neurotic maiden like lissome Shelley Wencelas, running against her will for Exhibit Day Queen -- or Osborn himself, the reluctant Jock transformed by ruthless publicity into The Freshman Whiz? Osborn doesn't know, but he's determined to think of something -- after all, human relationships are his specialty. And the jungle is waiting. And life. Or death. While nearby, steadfast in his quest for order in the midst of chaos, armed by the concept of duty, his green eyeshade and his trusty stapler, lurks Lawrence DeLancey ...

Includes its Report, 1896-19 .

An operatic, satirical romp through (high and low) Washington -- filled with politicos and pundits, divas and divine spirits -- by the greatly admired author of Time Remaining and the cult classic Mawrdew Czgowchwz ("Bravo, James McCourt, a literary countertenor, in the exacting tradition of Firbank and Nabokov" -- Susan Sontag). It opens with Delancey, a reporter for the "East Hampton Star, being sent to cover the environmental budget wars of the 104th Congress, his copy of Henry Adams's Democracy in hand, for background on the farrago called overnment. It introduces us to le tout de Washington: the socialite (and exiled eighties New York party girl) Anastasia Harrington (a.k.a. Bam-Bam) and her billionaire husband, Max; a senator obsessed with the fall of the republic and with his rogue companion, an ex-hustler and congressional phone-sex virtuoso; the semiretired transvestite ballerina Odette O'Doyle and the diva (operatic and otherwise) Vana Sprezza; and Delancey's new friend, Ornette, a living antidote to the racism of our times, who sympathizes with the sexually profligate President (lovingly referred to as POTUS). From Delancey's trip on the Metroliner where it all begins, to a drink-soaked escapade in Key West, to soirees at the Harringtons' and the Cosmos Club, to the grand finale (an uproarious Venetian bal masque at the Library of Congress), McCourt shows us the pyrotechnic power plays of the nineties, eerily parallel to (but far deadlier than) those portrayed in Adams's chronicle of earlier times. Here is Washington as it should be seen -- upside down, and inside right.