Lyssa Dent Hughes is the privileged, well-educated daughter of a Republican senator. She is the wife of a professor and the owner of a lovely house in Georgetown. She is also the president's nominee for Surgeon General. When the media discovers that once, long ago, she failed to respond for jury duty, this relatively minor misstep is portrayed as a serious moral lapse. A good friend uses the incident to make a point, scarcely thinking of the implications, and Lyssa must suffer the consequences. From that moment on, Lyssa Dent Hughes sits helplessly as the press investigates her family and friends, shattering her privacy, her career, and her world. Wendy Wasserstein's trenchant humor and sizzling dialogue combine with biting political commentary to produce a masterful, and topical, drama.

The sisters Rosensweig are three extraordinary Brooklyn-born Jewish women. Sara is the managing director of the European branch of an international bank, and she lives ostensibly happy, man-free-life in London with her intelligent daughter, Tess. Pfeni is an eccentric travel writer who pursues an unsatisfactory relationship with Geoffrey, a bisexual theatre director. And Gorgeous has the perfect husband and family in Massachusetts, where she pursues a "funsy" career as a radio agony aunt. When they meet up at Sara'a house in Holland Park to celebrate her 54th birthday, reawakened familial bonds cause each women to confront her past and her future. This self-exploration is sometimes painful, but the reunion is made very interesting by the arrival of the New Yorker, Merv, a furrier who takes a shine to Sara. Falling in love at 54 is not impossible, but who said it was meant to be easy?

Three Jewish middle-aged sisters, originally from Brooklyn, come together in Queen Anne's Gate, London, to celebrate the fifty-fourth birthday of Sara, the eldest, now a brilliant British banker. Divorced, a single mother, Sara no longer sees the necessity for romance. Gorgeous, suburban housewife and mother, is also a talk-show personality. And Pfeni, journalist and travel writer, still hasn't written her serious book on the women of Tajikistan. Pfeni's boyfriend, Geoffrey, director of the hit musical The Scarlet Pimpernel, brings to Sara's house Mervyn, a faux furrier, "the world leader in synthetic animal protective covering". Sara meets Merv and finds that even at fifty-four there are possibilities. An exuberant, heart-warming, contemporary comedy by one of America's best playwrights.

Here is a rollicking parody of the self-help genre, one that skewers the couch-bound, apathetic mentality so pervasive in America today.
With tongue in cheek, Sloth guides readers step-by-step toward a life of noncommittal inertia. "You have the right to be lazy," writes Wasserstein. "You can choose not to respond. You can choose not to move." Readers will find out the importance of Lethargiosis--the process of eliminating energy and drive, the vital first step in becoming a sloth. To help you attain the perfect state of indolent bliss, the book offers a wealth of self-help aids. Readers will find the sloth songbook, sloth breakfast bars (packed with sugar, additives, and a delicious touch of Ambien), sloth documentaries (such as the author's 12-hour epic on Thomas Aquinas), and the sloth network, channel 823, programming guaranteed not to stimulate or challenge in any way. ("It may be difficult to distinguish between this and other channels, but only on channel 823 can you watch me sleeping.") Readers will also learn the top ten lies about Sloth, the ten commandments of Sloth, the SLOTH mantra, even the "too-much ten"--over-achievers such as Marie Curie, Shakespeare, and William the Conqueror. You will discover how to become a sloth in your diet, exercise, work, and even love-life (true love leads to passion, she warns, and passion is the biggest enemy of sloth).
Wendy Wasserstein is one of America's great comic writers--one who always has a serious point to her humor. Here, as she pokes fun at the self-help industry, she also satirizes the legion of Americans who are cultural and political sloths.

Celebrated playwright and magnetic wit Wendy Wasserstein has been firmly rooted in New York’s cultural life since her childhood of Broadway matinees, but her appeal is universal. Shiksa Goddess collects thirty-five of her urbane, inspiring, and deeply empathic essays–all written when she was in her forties, and all infused with her trademark irreverent humor.

The full range of Wasserstein’s mid-life obsessions are covered in this eclectic collection: everything from Chekhov, politics, and celebrity, to family, fashion, and real estate. Whether fretting over her figure, discovering her gentile roots, proclaiming her love for ordered-in breakfasts, lobbying for affordable theater, or writing tenderly about her very Jewish mother and her own daughter, born when she was forty-eight and single, Wasserstein reveals the full, dizzying life of a shiksa goddess with unabashed candor and inimitable style.