Mark Cohen – författare

When Jane Smyers, a math professor specializing in fractal geometry, decides to send an article for proofreading to other specialists around the country, she is shocked to learn that three of them have died under mysterious circumstances. That's where Pepper Keane comes in. An ex-Marine with an encyclopedic knowledge of rock and roll, he finds himself attracted to Professor Smyers and is determined to find out what he can. At first he can't find any evidence that the three dead specialists even knew each other. But Keane continues to dig, and with the help of his computer hacker best friend and exercise guru brother, the suspects multiply - and the most likely is an FBI agent who just happens to be Keane's worst enemy.

It doesn't seem like a bad idea when Pepper Keane agrees to steal a champion bluetick coonhound from the leader of a sadistic biker gang. After all, the dog also belongs to the biker's missing girlfriend, Karlynn Slade. And though Karlynn stole three hundred grand from him, she's not entering the Witness Protection Program without the prized pooch. Karlynn's attorney asks Pepper to keep an eye on her until the feds are ready to help her disappear. But when Pepper also accepts payment from the biker to "look" for Karlynn, things get a little tricky. Soon, Pepper loses Karlynn, the biker puts a price on his head, gangs in every direction are after him, and there's still an unsolved murder that's begging for his attention.

"I made these pictures exactly as if I was taking pictures in Wilkes-Barre, my hometown. I was led only by what I could see on the street. Of course, the extreme newness of this giant country, Mexico, was shocking to me. There really is surrealism in the air."—Mark CohenBetween 1981 and 2003, Mark Cohen travelled to Mexico eight times. Seduced by the "surrealist" qualities he found there, Cohen took his camera to the streets of Mexico City, Oaxaca City, and Mérida, as well as other parts of the Yucatán. Following his split-second impulses, Cohen took his signature "grab shots," often flooding the subjects with the artificial light of the flash. His black-and-white photographs, taken at arm’s length with minimal focus, capture the textures and rhythms of gritty city streets and city life. Reminiscent of Cohen’s iconic photographs of working-class Pennsylvania towns, yet imbued with a perceptible sense of foreignness, these Mexican images convey the restless energy and strangeness of daily life.

Allan Sherman was the Larry David, the Adam Sandler, the Sacha Baron Cohen of 1963. He led Jewish humor and sensibilities out of ethnic enclaves and into the American mainstream with explosively funny parodies of classic songs that won Sherman extraordinary success and acclaim across the board, from Harpo Marx to President Kennedy. In Overweight Sensation, Mark Cohen argues persuasively for Sherman's legacy as a touchstone of postwar humor and a turning point in Jewish American cultural history. With exclusive access to Allan Sherman's estate, Cohen has written the first biography of the manic, bacchanalian, and hugely creative artist who sold three million albums in just twelve months, yet died in obscurity a decade later at the age of forty-nine. Comprehensive, dramatic, stylish, and tragic, Overweight Sensation is destined to become the definitive Sherman biography.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Funny Lady or read about the fantastic extravagance of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, ever visited Jerusalem, sung along to “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” or strolled through Times Square, then you have most likely heard about the tiny titan Billy Rose. Showman, songwriter, impresario, cultural arbiter, tough guy, visionary, wiseacre, and secret Jewish rescuer when Jews were struggling for survival in Europe, Billy Rose was a major figure in American life. Not Bad for Delancey Street: The Rise and Rise of Billy Rose is the first biography to tell the whole story of Rose’s life, and the only one to portray him as an exaggerated exemplar of a version of the American Jewish experience that came to predominate after World War II: secular, intermarried, bent on financial success, in love with Israel, and wedded to America. The life of Billy Rose was set against the great events of the twentieth century, including the Depression, when Rose became rich entertaining millions; the Nazi war against the Jews, which Rose fought with theatrical pageants that urged the American government to act; the postwar American boom, which Rose rode to attain extraordinary wealth; and the birth of Israel, where Rose staked his claim to immortality. Mark Cohen tells the unlikely but true story, based on exhaustive research, of Rose’s single-handed rescue in 1939 of an Austrian Jewish refugee stranded in Fascist Italy, an event that Rose never spoke of but which surfaced fifty years later as the core of Saul Bellow’s short novel, The Bellarosa Connection.

In July 1973 Cohen spent a month living in a dorm room at NYU while taking partin a film production workshop. His daily classes were short so he used his free time to walk aroundthe city with his camera. Only a few of the images were printed at the time and the vast majorityremained unseen, except as negatives, until now.New York in the 1970s was notorious for high crime rates, social disorder, an unsafe subway anda declining quality of life. Economic stagnation had hit the city hard and many of the middle-classresidents had left for the suburbs. This is often evidenced in Cohen’s photographs in the graffiti,litter and ruin present on the streets but his images also depict a New York which is full of life andon the move.