Adam Levin

A collection of performance poetry from a range of the freshest South African voices - school learners, university students, and working professionals. Compiled from two workshops held in 2024, these poems show that the poetry of the stage is also of the page, covering an array of subjects and unrestrained by form. Edgy, experimental and passionate, here are diverse and dynamic reflections on the present moment in South Africa and the world, by those who will write its future.

Beginning with a chance encounter with the beautiful Eliza June Watermark and ending, four days and 900 pages later, with the Events of November 17, this is the story of Gurion Maccabee, age ten: a lover, a fighter, a scholar, and a truly spectacular talker. Ejected from three Jewish day schools for acts of violence and messianic tendencies, Gurion ends up in the Cage, a special lockdown program for the most hopeless cases of Aptakisic Junior High. Separated from his scholarly followers, Gurion becomes a leader of a very different sort, with righteous aims building to a revolution of troubling intensity. The Instructions is an absolutely singular work of fiction by an important new talent. Adam Levin has shaped a world driven equally by moral fervor and slapstick comedy-a novel that is muscular and verbose, troubling and empathetic, monumental, breakneck, romantic, and unforgettable. Thirteen years after its original publication, McSweeney's is releasing this special, two paperback edition of Levin's beloved novel which continues to find new readers each year.

From the award-winning author of Bubblegum and The Instructions, a daring new novel about the irony, the humor, and the heartbreak of survivorship. "Adam Levin is one of our wildest writers and our funniest." -George Saunders, bestselling, award-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo A one-in-ten-billion natural disaster devastates Chicago. A Jewish comedian, his most devoted fan, and the city's mayor must struggle to move forward while the world--quite literally--caves beneath their feet. With this polyphonic tale of Chicago-style politics and political correctness, stand-up comedy and Jewish identity, celebrity, drugs, and animal psychology, Levin has constructed a monument to laughter, love, art, and resilience in an age of spectacular loss.

Explore long-lost and never-before-seen images of downtown, Mayfair Mall's Ice Chalet, Brady Street, the Mitchell Park Domes, Milwaukee County Stadium, and much, much more. Introduced by Kodak in 1935, Kodachrome quickly became popular with professional and amateur photographers in the years after World War II. Countless Kodachrome slides now lie neglected and discarded in attics and basements like tiny time capsules just waiting to be rediscovered. Sharing more than 140 full-color photos from his own collection, Adam Levin, curator of the popular Old Milwaukee Facebook group, leads a stroll down memory lane into the Milwaukee of yesteryear.

"Adam Levin is one of our wildest writers and our funniest, and Bubblegum is a dazzling accomplishment of wit and inventiveness." --George Saunders "Levin's brains may have earned him a cult...but here he swells to a democratic reach. Give him a try sometime. His gate's wide open." --Garth Risk Hallberg, The New York Times Book Review The astonishing new novel by the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award-winning author of The Instructions. Bubblegum is set in an alternate present-day world in which the Internet does not exist, and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology--a "flesh-and-bone robot" called the Curio--has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to, but must find a way to live in. At age thirty-eight, still living at home with his widowed father, Belt insulates himself from the awful and terrifying world outside by spending most of his time with books, his beloved Curio, and the voices in his head, which he isn't entirely sure are in his head. After Belt's father goes on a fishing excursion, a simple trip to the bank escalates into an epic saga that eventually forces Belt to confront the world he fears, as well as his estranged childhood friend Jonboat, the celebrity astronaut and billionaire. In Bubblegum, Adam Levin has crafted a profoundly hilarious, resonant, and monumental narrative about heartbreak, longing, art, and the search for belonging in an incompatible world. Bubblegum is a rare masterwork of provocative social (and self-) awareness and intimate emotional power.

Across the city, fading advertisements and ghost signs tell the story of Milwaukee as it was in years gone by. Near Riverside Park, Schlitz still touts its national dominance decades after the brewery's dissolution. A recently restored downtown sign reminds passersby of the John Ernst Caf , a once-beloved German eatery. In West Allis, Sealtest makes an expired pitch for its ice cream. On the northwest side of the city, a sign for Roundy's Foods stands as tall, bright and clear as the day it first went up. Join Milwaukee native and ghost sign hunter Adam Levin as he explores the national brands and local shops of the Cream City's past.

Increasingly, identity theft is a fact of life. We might once have hoped to protect ourselves from hackers with airtight passwords and aggressive spam folders, and those are good ideas as far as they go. But the truth is, there are people out there - a lot of them - who treat stealing your identity as a full-time job.One such company is a nameless firm located in Russia, which has a trove of over a billion internet passwords. Another set up a website full of live streams of hacked web cameras, showing everything from people's offices and lobbies to the feeds from baby monitors. Even purchases made in person are still logged by retailers like Target, who are famously vulnerable to hackers. Adam Levin, a longtime consumer advocate and identity fraud expert, is your guide to this brave new world. By telling memorable stories and extracting the relevant lessons, he offers a strategy for dealing with these risks. You may not be able to prevent identity theft, but you certainly shouldn't wait until it happens to take action. Levin's approach is defined by the three M's: minimizing risk, monitoring your identity, and managing the damage. The book is also organized around the different problems caused by identity theft: financial, criminal, medical, familial, etc., enabling readers to dip into the sections most relevant to them. Swiped is a practical, lively book that is essential to surviving the ever-changing world of online security. It is invaluable not only for preventing problems but helping cope when they arrive.

Identity fraud happens to everyone. So what do you do when it's your turn? Increasingly, identity theft is a fact of life. We might once have hoped to protect ourselves from hackers with airtight passwords and aggressive spam filters, and those are good ideas as far as they go. But with the breaches of huge organizations like Target, AshleyMadison.com, JPMorgan Chase, Sony, Anthem, and even the US Office of Personnel Management, more than a billion personal records have already been stolen, and chances are good that you're already in harm's way. This doesn't mean there's no hope. Your identity may get stolen, but it doesn't have to be a life-changing event. Adam Levin, a longtime consumer advocate and identity fraud expert, provides a method to help you keep hackers, phishers, and spammers from becoming your problem. Levin has seen every scam under the sun: fake companies selling "credit card insurance"; criminal, medical, and child identity theft; emails that promise untold riches for some personal information; catphishers, tax fraud, fake debt collectors who threaten you with legal action to confirm your account numbers; and much more.As Levin shows, these folks get a lot less scary if you see them coming. With a clearheaded, practical approach, Swiped is your guide to surviving the identity theft epidemic. Even if you've already become a victim, this strategic book will help you protect yourself, your identity, and your sanity.

This provocative story, told with a unique blend of love, violence and slapstick humor, brings to life the colliding worlds of a colorful cast of characters including overweight romantics, legless prodigies, textbook lovers, dirty old men, angry mimes and nervous comedians.