THE DIAGNOSTIC MANUAL OF MISHEGAS (DMOM) is a delightful parody of the American Psychiatric Association's "Bible of psychiatry," the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). In this playful send-up of the DSM, the authors-all of whom are distinguished writers with deep roots in the field of mental health-cut through the hundreds of categories in the 1000-page D.S.M. by dividing all mental disorders into two realms: mishegas major and mishegas minor. And for each of the sub-categories it analyzes-spilkes major (and spilkes minor), yenta, kvetch, alter kocker, shnorrer, dementia-with-benefits, etc.- it provides light-hearted anecdotes that not only illustrate the diagnostic category, but also make you plotz with laughter. THE DMOM will enable readers to transform ordinary tsuris and mishegas-the glooms, blues, angsts, and general chazzerie of their lives-into transcendent and easy-to-understand categories. It will turn kvetching into kvelling and guilt into gelt, so that readers will learn to live at peace with their inner mishegas and to treasure its precious and life-giving absurdities. A perfect gift for Mental Health Month (May), Father's Day, or for your favorite mishugenah friend or relative any time of the year, THE DMOM is sure to keep readers laughing long after the last page is read.

" Neugeboren] is the first writer to capture what it's like for the millions of families who must cope with a problem for which, most of the time, there is no solution. It's that portrait of a loving relationship that gives Imagining Robert its great power."--Book of the Month Club News "Novelist Neugeboren has written a detailed, exquisitely painful, and always thoughtful account of his younger brother's long struggle with mental illness. It] may bring understanding to those who can barely imagine such horrors and comfort to those who have and felt it alone."--Publishers Weekly "An uncommon tale of brotherly love, and a passionate defense of the notion that dignity belongs as much to the mad as the rest of us."--Kirkus Reviews Jay Neugeboren and his brother, Robert, grew up in Brooklyn in the years following World War II. Both brothers--smart, talented, and popular--seemed well on the way to successful lives when, for reasons that remain ultimately mysterious, Robert had a mental breakdown at age nineteen. For the past forty years Jay has been not only his brother's friend and confidant, but his advocate, as Robert continues to suffer from the ravages of the illness that has kept him institutionalized for most of his adult life. Imagining Robert tells the story of these two brothers and how their love for one another has enabled both to survive and to thrive in miraculous, surprising ways. It reveals how even the grimmest of lives can be sustained by the power of love. Jay Neugeboren is the author of thirteen books, including two collections of award-winning stories, two prize-winning novels, and two nonfiction titles. His most recent book is Transforming Madness: New Lives for People Living with Mental Illness, winner of a "Ken" 2000 Book Award from the New York City/Metro Chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

In 1951, sport and greed combined to rock college basketball with scandal and shatter the lives of those involved. Big Mantells the fictional story of one player sent tumbling in the shakedown. For Mack Davis, a black All-American basketball star, the point-fixing scandals represent the end of a dream. Fallen from the big time, Mack must return to the lost schoolyards of his childhood Brooklyn neighborhood, where he is now stopped cold by the sport that once saved him. Gradually, however, Mack's real love for the game, combined with a series of unexpected pressures, goads him into an ironic comeback -- playing on an all-black team for a B'nai B'rith championship in a local Brooklyn synagogue with a cast of unlikely heroes and friends.
A tight, jabbing novel that moves with the speed and hard grace of basketball itself, BIG MAN puts Jay Neugeboren among "the surprisingly tiny company of fiction writers who have captured the essence of the athlete as a human being" (Kansas City Star).

In 1839, Jose Policarpo Rodriguez came north with his father from Zaragosa, Mexico, to the Republic of Texas. Poli was ten years old when he arrived in Texas, and he and his father settled in the Hill Country near San Antonio. Poli grew up with Comanches, surveyed territory for the Republic of Texas and the United States Army, fought against warring Indians, and mapped settlements for nineteenth-century German settlers in Texas. He was the first non-Indian to discover the Big Bend Country and Cascades Caverns, and during the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, he was Captain of the San Antonio Home Guard. Caught between the three main elements that made up early Texas-Mexicans, Indians, and Anglos-he struggled to decide where his true loyalties lay, and his decisions showed a kind of courage that was rare in those days. . .and is still rare today.

Prize-winning novelist Jay Neugeboren's third collection of short stories focuses on Jews in various states of exile and expatriation--strangers in strange lands, far from home. These dozen tales, by an author whose stories have been selected for more than fifty anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories, span the twentieth century and vividly capture brief moments in the lives of their characters: a rabbi in a small town in New England struggling to tend to his congregation and himself, retirees who live in Florida but dream of Brooklyn, a boy at a summer camp in upstate New York learning about the Holocaust for the first time, Russians living in Massachusetts with the family who helped them immigrate. In "The Other End of the World," an American soldier who has survived life in a Japanese prisoner of war camp grieves for members of his family murdered in a Nazi death camp, and in "Poppa's Books" a young boy learns to share his father's passion for the rare books that represent the Old World. "This Third Life" tells of a divorced woman who travels across Germany searching for new meaning in her life after her children leave home, while both "His Violin" and "The Golden Years" explore the plight of elderly Jews, displaced from New York City to retirement communities in Florida, who struggle with memory, madness, and mortality.

Set in various times and places, these poignant stories are all tales of personal exile that also illuminate that greater diaspora--geographical, emotional, or spiritual--in which many of us, whether Jews or non-Jews, live.

In "Imagining Robert", Jay Neugeboren told the sad, deeply personal, often harrowing story of one man and one family's struggle with chronic mental illness. Now, he presents an overview of the entire field: a clear-eyed, articulate, comprehensive survey of our mental health care system's shortcomings and of new, effective, proven approaches that make real differences in the lives of millions of Americans afflicted with severe mental illness. A book for general readers and professionals alike, "Transforming Madness" is at once a critique, a message of hope and recovery, and a call to action. Filled with dramatic stories, it shows us the many ways in which people who have suffered the long-term ravages of psychiatric disorders have reclaimed full and viable lives.

The American Sun & Wind Moving Picture Company is an enchanting tale set in the silent film era. Beginning in 1915, in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where a Jewish family makes one and two reel silent films, the novel is composed of six chapters, each a discrete silent film in itself. Jay Neugeboren is the author of nineteen books, including two prize-winning novels (The Stolen Jew, Before My Life Began), two award-winning books of nonfiction (Imagining Robert, Transforming Madness), and four collections of award-winning stories.