"He should have seen it coming. His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one..." Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular and disappointed BBC worker, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick, a Czechoslovakian always more concerned with the wider world than with exam results. Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and with Treslove, his chequered and unsuccessful record with women rendering him an honorary third widower, they dine at Libor's grand, central London apartment. It's a sweetly painful evening of reminiscence in which all three remove themselves to a time before they had loved and lost; a time before they had fathered children, before the devastation of separations, before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it. Better, perhaps, to go through life without knowing happiness at all because that way you had less to mourn? Treslove finds he has tears enough for the unbearable sadness of both his friends' losses. And it's that very evening, at exactly 11:30pm, as Treslove hesitates a moment outside the window of the oldest violin dealer in the country as he walks home, that he is attacked. After this, his whole sense of who and what he is will slowly and ineluctably change. The Finkler Question is a scorching story of exclusion and belonging, justice and love, ageing, wisdom and humanity. Funny, furious, unflinching, this extraordinary novel shows one of our finest writers at his brilliant best.

It takes a particular kind of man to want an embroidered polo player astride his left nipple. Occasionally, when I am tired and emotional, or consumed with self-dislike, I try to imagine myself as someone else, a wearer of Yarmouth shirts and fleecy sweats, of windbreakers and rugged Tyler shorts, of baseball caps with polo players where the section of the brain that concerns itself with aesthetics is supposed to be. But the hour passes. Good men return from fighting Satan in the wilderness the stronger for their struggle, and so do I. The winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize, Howard Jacobson, brims with life in this collection of his most acclaimed journalism. From the unusual disposal of his father-in-law's ashes and the cultural wasteland of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to the melancholy sensuality of Leonard Cohen and desolation of Wagner's tragedies, Jacobson writes with all the thunder and joy of a man possessed. Absurdity piles upon absurdity, and glorious sentences weave together to create a hilarious, heartbreaking and uniquely human collection. This book is not just a series of parts, but an irresistible, unputdownable sum which triumphantly out-Thurbers Thurber.

Longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and hailed by "The Times" (London) as Ra work of genius, S Jacobson's exquisitely written, audaciously funny novel explores the countless questions of postwar Jewish identity.

Oliver Walzer is shy, bookish, Jewish. He doesn’t know how to talk to girls. But he can slice, flick and spin a ping pong ball better than any teenager in Manchester. Oliver channels his frustrated adolescent lust into the game he loves. That is until the heartbreaking Lorna Peachley and the prospect of a place at Cambridge take his eye off the ball.

An investigation of the origins of comedy and the meaning of laughter, drawing on biology, anthropology, classical studies, behavioural science, philosophy and psychology - with a few authorial jokes along the way.

Discover how to change the lives of the people around you In You Can Change Other People, the world’s #1 executive coach, Peter Bregman, and Howie Jacobson, Ph.D., share the Four Steps to help the people around you make positive change — even if they’ve been stuck for years. The authors rely on over 50 years of collective professional experience to show you exactly what to say to influence those around you for the better. Changing the way you talk will stop you from being perceived as a critic, and turn you into a welcomed and effective ally. You’ll learn how to: Disarm their defensiveness and increase their confidence to act Turn people’s biggest problems into even bigger opportunities Ensure accountability and follow through without making them dependent on you No one wants to be changed; but change and personal growth are critical to success, and more importantly, to a fulfilled life. You Can Change Other People is a must-read for those who want to improve their impact with co-workers, family members, and everyone in between.

When fast-breaking political events forced British novelist Jacobson (Peeping Tom) to put off a trip to Lithuania planned as a search for his Jewish roots, he accepted an offer from the BBC to visit Jewish communities around the globe instead. This informed and witty account of his experiences deals with the wide variety of contemporary Jewish life, as well as with how Jacobson's observations affected his own concept of what it means to be a Jew. Riding an emotional roller coaster, he witnessed the hostility between Jews and African Americans in New York City, attended services in a gay synagogue in California and found his basic cynicism about religion reinforced after he spent time with Orthodox Jews in Israel, although his spirits were lifted by a visit to an idealistic, tolerant Israeli kibbutz. His journey concluded with the postponed trip to Lithuania, where the author found virulent anti-Semitism.

'A . . . tender love story . . . This book is alive. It pulses with warmth and intelligence' The Times A wickedly observed novel about falling in love at the end of your life, by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question. At the age of ninety-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything – including her own children. She spends her days stitching morbid samplers and tormenting her two carers with tangled tales of her husbands and affairs. Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walks without a frame and speaks without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he’s whispered about as the last of the eligible bachelors. He forgets nothing –especially not the shame of a childhood incident that has long hung over him. There's very little left remaining for either of them. . . But perhaps just enough to heal some of the hurt inflicted along the way, and find new meaning in what's left. *SHORTLISTED FOR THE WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE 2020*

A provocatively entertaining, savagely funny satire on Donald Trump by Britain’s greatest comic novelist. Pussy is the story of Prince Fracassus, heir presumptive to the Duchy of Origen, famed for its golden-gated skyscrapers and casinos, who passes his boyhood watching reality shows on TV, imagining himself to be the Roman Emperor Nero, and fantasizing about hookers. He is idle, boastful, thin-skinned and egotistic; has no manners, no curiosity, no knowledge, no idea and no words in which to express them. Could he, in that case, be the very leader to make the country great again?

AdWords lets every business-from eBay PowerSellers to Fortune 500 companies-create targeted, cost-efficient advertising campaigns on the Web, and accounts for the bulk of Google's $6 billion in annual revenues This all-new guide helps advertisers get a handle on AdWords complexities and nuances, adopt AdWords best practices, and turn clicks into ka-ching! Topics covered include conducting quick and cheap market research, crafting a message that cuts through the clutter, choosing AdWords settings, bidding on keywords, setting a maximum daily spend, improving the Web page that an ad points to, testing strategies, tracking results, and using Web analytics tools Includes an exclusive offer from Google-AdWords credits equivalent to the price of the book-plus a companion Web site with up-to-the-minute AdWords tips and tricks, narrated video walkthroughs, and free trials of the author's software