About this item
Corbin College, not-quite-upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian - but not an historian of the Jews - is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host, to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with non-fiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics - "An Account of A Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family" that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.
About the Author
Joshua C. Cohen began writing "Leverage" after reading a news account of a horrific attack by a group of high school seniors on their fellow underclassmen. When the victims reluctantly came forward, instead of receiving offers of help, they were ostracized by the surrounding community for sullying the reputation of the school and causing a cancellation of the football season. Joshua's fascination with that part of human nature--the need to keep quiet when awful things occur and how that leads to victims getting wronged twice--is what started the whole story that eventually led to "Leverage."Joshua C. Cohen grew up in Minnesota and was an avid athlete in many sports but he fell in love with gymnastics and devoted most of his time to training in that sport. Despite his intense effort, he discovered very quickly, when he walked on to the men's gymnastics program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, that there was no way he was going to compete at the collegiate level. Joshua promptly walked himself right back off the team and chose, instead, to live vicariously as an elite level gymnast by rooming with and befriending members of the squad."Leverage" allowed Joshua a perfect opportunity to combine his love of both gymnastics and football into one story.If you want to read more, please visit his website at leveragethebook.com
