Catastrophes and Trophies This collection is actually the combination and slight rearrangement of four separate volumes of verse; almost all of these poems were written in the calendar year 2001. It's not much to show for a year of human life-- that rich mystery we are twisted into by such a resolute hand. The main emphasis of this collection (as I hope will be quite clear) is Nature. Nature and Naturalism are not quite the same thing, however, and I have always had my own disagreements with the various proponents of those who took too dogmatically Thoreau's painful premise "Simplify, simplify, simplify." The sub-title is "inner nature poems," and that is to help show that the weather for humans is never merely a matter of what's over our heads-- it's what's in our hearts as well. --from the Introduction

The essays from the pen of Daniel Weeks in A More Prosaic Light range from social and political commentary to literary criticism and reminiscences about the literary and cultural scene on the Jersey Shore. Weeks tackles topics as diverse as Hollywood movies, middle school jitters, Thanksgiving, the dying fishing industry in New Jersey, Edison's phonograph, heat waves, the great Englishtown Auction, Romantic poetry, and the elusive American Dream. Weeks's literary essays also range widely from the poets of the British canon-Coleridge, Keats, and Yeats-to American moderns and contemporaries-Amiri Baraka, Charles Olson, Robert Pinsky, and Louise Gluck. The essays and reviews here are interspersed with Weeks's reminiscences of his encounters with various writers, which provide an entertaining inside view of the literary scene on the Jersey Shore during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries."

FUNNIER THAN ADRIAN MOLE AND FAR SEXIER! Does not skirt round the vast injustice of apartheid SUPERB MEMOIR Joffe is a man sui generis. Impish at times, but always interesting. Memorable and well written! AN INTIMATE, FUNNY, AND PROFOUND PERSONAL HISTORY Reading this funny, clever, sometimes vicious portrayal of growing up in Johannesburg in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, I found myself reminded of Blakes line To see a world in a grain of sand. This is because Joffe, in writing a detailed and often very amusing account of his personal adventures and misadventures, captures also the texture of the broader environment, the brutal decades of racist horror of his native land. Joffe relates events with the engaging rhythm of all great story tellers - there are villains like sadistic teachers and fatuous fathers-in-law, there are lost adolescents in pursuit of sex and meaning, there are coming of age crises and triumphs, and an almost Dickensian host of memorable, often quirky, family members and friends. Read it, and you will see what I mean. Read it and youll laugh frequently. Read it and youll better understand the last 80 years of South African history. BRILLIANT MEMOIR Fascinating portrait of life in pre-Mandela South Africa, packed with very fine vignettes. A page-turning account of adolescence and the pains of growing up. Source: Amazon customer reviews

PBS's The Great American Read named it one of America's best-loved novels. A Separate Peace has been a bestseller in the United States for nearly thirty years, and it is ageless in its depiction of youth during a time when the entire country was losing its innocence to World War II. A Separate Peace is a horrific and brilliant fable about the dark side of adolescence set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II. Gene is an introverted, lonely intellectual. Phineas is a reckless athlete who is attractive and taunts others. Like the war itself, what happens between the two friends one summer robs these guys and their world of their innocence.