{"product_id":"a-house-is-not-a-home-9781558495593","title":"A House Is Not a Home","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Polly Adler | Rachel Rubin\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: University of Massachusetts Press\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Memoirs\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePolly 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.\" \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis 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, \u003ci\u003eA House Is Not a Home\u003c\/i\u003e 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAdler'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 \u003ci\u003eGangs of New York \u003c\/i\u003ethrough more recent works on Jewish and Italian gangsters, this book brings women's lives and problems to the forefront. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eA House Is Not a Home\u003c\/i\u003e 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\u003ci\u003e House Is Not a Home\u003c\/i\u003e 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.","brand":"University of Massachusetts Press","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47612972335255,"sku":"9781558495593","price":3235.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9781558495593.webp?v=1775081667","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/a-house-is-not-a-home-9781558495593","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}