In 'Beautiful Mutants', Lapinski, a manipulative and magical Russian exile, summons forth a number of highly contemporary urban pilgrims. Through them, Levy explores broken dreams and self-destructive desires in a shimmering, dislocated allegory of its times. In 'Swallowing Geography' J.K. is always on the road, travelling Europe with her typewriter in a pillowcase. From J.K.'s irreverent, ironic perspective, Levy charts a new, dizzying, end-of-the-century world of shifting boundaries and displaced peoples.

Uriah Levy's naval career spanned the age of sail to the era of steam-driven ironclads. As one of the few Jewish Americans in the U.S. Navy, Levy was the target of prejudice and was court-martialed six times for his response to perceived insults, yet he was the only Jew who reached the rank of Flag Officer. As an advocate for the enlisted soldier, he fought for and succeeded in putting an end to flogging in the Navy. As perhaps the first American historic preservationist, he bought and restored Jefferson's beloved but failing Monticello and opened it for public tours. In further tribute to his idol, he commissioned the statue of Jefferson that stands in the U.S. Capitol rotunda today. Drawing on archival and printed sources, British and American naval records, local records of Levy's residences, the records of several Jewish congregations in the United States, and rarely used naval court martial records, Ira Dye has produced a modern biography of Levy in the context of his time, focusing on his contributions as a naval officer from the War of 1812 until the Civil War as well as the personal characteristics that drove him to make those contributions. Levy served in the Mediterranean during the early antebellum period when the United States was establishing a presence in that area, later commanded the Mediterranean Squadron during the turbulent years of European unrest in the 1850s, was on board the Argus during its fatal cruise in the War of 1812, and presided over one of the few documented charges of homosexual activity in the Old Navy. Rich with details of life in the sailing navy, the story of Uriah Levy is a significant contribution to antebellum naval history.

Introduces Asser Levy, a member of the first group of refugee Jews who, fleeing persecution, arrived in America from Brazil in 1654 and began a legal fight for religious and civil rights. Includes historical notes, timeline, and glossary.

One of the Best Technology Books of 2020—Financial Times “Levy’s all-access Facebook reflects the reputational swan dive of its subject. . . . The result is evenhanded and devastating.”—San Francisco Chronicle “[Levy’s] evenhanded conclusions are still damning.”—Reason “[He] doesn’t shy from asking the tough questions.”—The Washington Post “Reminds you the HBO show Silicon Valley did not have to reach far for its satire.”—NPR.org The definitive history, packed with untold stories, of one of America’s most controversial and powerful companies: Facebook As a college sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg created a simple website to serve as a campus social network. Today, Facebook is nearly unrecognizable from its first, modest iteration. In light of recent controversies surrounding election-influencing “fake news” accounts, the handling of its users’ personal data, and growing discontent with the actions of its founder and CEO—who has enormous power over what the world sees and says—never has a company been more central to the national conversation. Millions of words have been written about Facebook, but no one has told the complete story, documenting its ascendancy and missteps. There is no denying the power and omnipresence of Facebook in American daily life, or the imperative of this book to document the unchecked power and shocking techniques of the company, from growing at all costs to outmaneuvering its biggest rivals to acquire WhatsApp and Instagram, to developing a platform so addictive even some of its own are now beginning to realize its dangers. Based on hundreds of interviews from inside and outside Facebook, Levy’s sweeping narrative of incredible entrepreneurial success and failure digs deep into the whole story of the company that has changed the world and reaped the consequences.

After being hit by lightning, 12-year-old Lilah, who has a crush on classmate Andrew Finkel, discovers that she can communicate with dead people, including her grandmother who wants Lilah to find a new wife for Lilah's divorced father.

“[Andrew Levy] brings a literary sensibility to the study of history, and has written a richly complex book, one that transcends Carter’s story to consider larger questions of individual morality and national memory.” –The New York Times Book Review In 1791, Robert Carter III, a pillar of Virginia’s Colonial aristocracy, broke with his peers by arranging the freedom of his nearly five hundred slaves. It would be the largest single act of liberation in the history of American slavery before the Emancipation Proclamation. Despite this courageous move–or perhaps because of it–Carter’s name has all but vanished from the annals of American history. In this haunting, brilliantly original work, Andrew Levy explores the confluence of circumstance, conviction, war, and emotion that led to Carter’s extraordinary act. As Levy points out, Carter was not the only humane master, nor the sole partisan of emancipation, in that freedom-loving age. So why did he dare to do what other visionary slave owners only dreamed of? In answering this question, Levy reveals the unspoken passions that divided Carter from others of his class, and the religious conversion that enabled him to see his black slaves in a new light. Drawing on years of painstaking research and written with grace and fire, The First Emancipator is an astonishing, challenging, and ultimately inspiring book. “A vivid narrative of the future emancipator’s evolution.” –The Washington Post Book World “Highly recommended . . . a truly remarkable story about an eccentric American hero and visionary . . . should be standard reading for anyone with an interest in American history.” –Library Journal (starred review) “Absorbing. . . Well researched and thoroughly fascinating, this forgotten history will appeal to readers interested in the complexities of American slavery.” –Booklist (starred review)

Until the early nineteenth century, "risk" was a specialized term: it was the commodity exchanged in a marine insurance contract. Freaks of Fortune tells the story of how the modern concept of risk emerged in the United States. Born on the high seas, risk migrated inland and became essential to the financial management of an inherently uncertain capitalist future. Focusing on the hopes and anxieties of ordinary people, Jonathan Levy shows how risk developed through the extraordinary growth of new financial institutions-insurance corporations, savings banks, mortgage-backed securities markets, commodities futures markets, and securities markets-while posing inescapable moral questions. For at the heart of risk's rise was a new vision of freedom. To be a free individual, whether an emancipated slave, a plains farmer, or a Wall Street financier, was to take, assume, and manage one's own personal risk. Yet this often meant offloading that same risk onto a series of new financial institutions, which together have only recently acquired the name "financial services industry." Levy traces the fate of a new vision of personal freedom, as it unfolded in the new economic reality created by the American financial system. Amid the nineteenth-century's waning faith in God's providence, Americans increasingly confronted unanticipated challenges to their independence and security in the boom and bust chance-world of capitalism. Freaks of Fortuneis one of the first books to excavate the historical origins of our own financialized times and risk-defined lives.