Polly Adler

Polly Adler's house--the brothel that gave this best-selling 1953 autobiography its title--was a major site of New York City underworld activity from the 1920s through the 1940s. Adler's notorious Lexington Avenue house of prostitution functioned as a sort of social club for New York's gangsters and a variety of other celebrities, including Robert Benchley and his friend Dorothy Parker. According to one New York tabloid, it made Adler's name synonymous with sin. This new edition of Adler's autobiography brings back into print a book that was a mass phenomenon, in both hardback and paperback, when it was first published. A self-consciously literary work, A House Is Not a Home provides an informal social history of immigrant mobility, prostitution, Jewish life in New York, police dishonesty, the white slavery scare of the early twentieth century, and political corruption. Adler's story fills an important gap in the history of immigrant life, urban experience, and organized crime in New York City. While most other accounts of the New York underworld focus on the lives of men, from Herbert Asbury's Gangs of New York through more recent works on Jewish and Italian gangsters, this book brings women's lives and problems to the forefront. A House Is Not a Home is compellingly readable and was popular enough to draw Hollywood's attention in the early 1960s--leading to a film starring Shelley Winters as Adler. The book has been largely forgotten in the ensuing decades, lost both to its initial audience of general readers and to scholars in women's studies, immigration history, and autobiography who are likely to find it a treasure trove. Now, with a new introduction by Rachel Rubin that contextualizes Adler's life and literary achievement, A House Is Not a Home is again available to the many readers who have come to understand such marginal life stories as a special refraction of the more typical American success narrative.

A House is Not a Home

A House Is Not a Home

Chaos de Luxe

"Polly Adler's house--the brothel that gave this best-selling 1953 autobiography its title--was a major site of New York City underworld activity from the 1920s through the 1940s. Adler's notorious Lexington Avenue house of prostitution functioned as a sort of social club for New York's gangsters and a variety of other celebrities, including Robert Benchley and his friend Dorothy Parker. According to one New York tabloid, it made Adler's name synonymous with sin." --Google Books.

Edith Kneifl

Eva Rossmann

David Schalko

Petra Hartlieb

Konrad Paul Liessmann

Dirk Stermann

Peter Henisch

Monika Held

Tex Rubinowitz

Cornelia Travnicek

Elisabeth Klar

Susanne Scholl

Klaus Nüchtern

Ela Angerer

Kurt Palm

Anna Weidenholzer

Klaus Oppitz

Verena Petrasch

Friedrich Dönhoff

Wolfgang Hermann

Heidi List

Margarita Kinstner

Ruth Cerha

Bettina Baláka

Geschichten zum Geburtstag

Tortenschlachten

Gustav

Bettina Balaka

Dirk Sterman

Nicht feiern ist auch keine Lösung! Geburtstage sind ebenso großartig wie unvermeidbar - und das gilt nicht nur für uns, sondern auch für Tanten und Onkeln, für Eltern und Geliebte, für Omas und Opas, für Freundinnen, die nicht älter, und Kinder, die nicht rasch genug größer werden können. Sogar an jene wird hier gedacht, die vor jeder Feier ans andere Ende der Welt (oder auch nur in die nächste Bar) flüchten, ebenso an die Auserwählten, die am 29. Februar, am 1. Mai oder am letzten Tag des Jahres geboren oder gar bereits wiedergeboren sind: 25 zeitgenössische Autorinnen und Autoren schenken uns ihre schrägsten, herzerwärmendsten und unglaublichsten „Geschichten zum Geburtstag". Dieses Buch selbst ist schon ein Grund zum Feiern. Mit Geschichten von Polly Adler, Ela Angerer, Bettina Baláka, Ruth Cerha, Friedrich Dönhoff, Petra Hartlieb, Monika Held, Peter Henisch, Wolfgang Hermann, Margarita Kinstner, Elisabeth Klar, Edith Kneifl, Konrad Paul Liessmann, Heidi List, Klaus Nüchtern, Klaus Oppitz, Kurt Palm, Verena Petrasch, Eva Rossmann, Tex Rubinowitz, David Schalko, Susanne Scholl, Dirk Stermann, Cornelia Travnicek, Anna Weidenholzer und einem Songtext von Gustav

Polly Adler

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