Joseph Epstein
is an essayist, short story writer, and editor, best known as a former editor of the Phi Beta Kappa Society

Phi Beta Kappa Society

The Phi Beta Kappa Society is an academic honor society. Its mission is to "celebrate and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences"; and induct "the most outstanding students of arts and sciences at America’s leading colleges and universities." Founded at The College of William and...

's The American Scholar

The American Scholar (magazine)

The American Scholar is the literary quarterly of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, founded in 1932. The magazine has won fourteen National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors from 1999 to present, including awards for General Excellence...

magazine and for his recent essay collection, Snobbery: The American Version. He was also a lecturer at Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

 from 1974 to 2002. He is a Contributing Editor at The Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of...

and a long-time contributor of essays and short stories to The New Criterion

The New Criterion

The New Criterion is a New York-based monthly literary magazine and journal of artistic and cultural criticism, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball. It has sections for criticism of poetry, theater, art, music, the media, and books...

and Commentary

Commentary (magazine)

Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...

. The late William F. Buckley, Jr.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...

, in his review of Snobbery, called Epstein the wittiest writer alive.

Epstein's body of work reveals his fascination with common everyday situations, amusing trends and small pleasures that he brings to his reader's attention. He also specializes in essays that shed light on the musings and ideas of famous and forgotten authors and writes short stories that prominently feature the city of Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 and the characters that have populated his 70 years as an observer of the city.

Essay collections and books

• Divorced in America: Marriage in an Age of Possibility (1974)
• Familiar Territory: Observations on American Life (1979)
• Ambition: The Secret Passion (1980)
• Middle of My Tether: Familiar Essays (1983)
• Plausible Prejudices: Essays on American Writing (1985)
• Once More Around the Block: Familiar Essays (1987)
• Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives (1988)
• A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays (1991)
• Pertinent Players: Essays on the Literary Life (1993)
• With My Trousers Rolled: Familiar Essays (1995)
• Life Sentences: Literary Essays (1997)
• Narcissus Leaves the Pool: Familiar Essays (1999, paperback 2007)
• Snobbery: The American Version (2002)
• Envy (2003)
• Friendship: An Exposé (2006)
• Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide (2006)
• In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage (2007)
• Fred Astaire (2008)
• Gossip (2011)

Short story collections

• The Goldin Boys: Stories (1991)
• Fabulous Small Jews (2003)
• The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff: And Other Stories (2010)

Short Stories

My Brother Eli appearing in The Best American Short Stories 2007 pp. 85–112.
"Beyond the Pale" appearing in "The Best American Short Stories 2009" pp. 41–59

External links

• "The Culture of Celebrity: Let us now praise famous airheads" in The Weekly Standard

• "Friends Aren't What They Used to Be: The New Ethos of Intimacy" a review of Friendship: An Exposé, in Slate
  Slate (magazine)
  Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
  
  

• " Kid Turns 70: And Nobody Cares" in The Weekly Standard

• "Golden Juggler" a review of In a Cardboard Belt! by Joseph Tartakovsky, in the Claremont Review of Books
  Claremont Review of Books
  The Claremont Review of Books is a quarterly review of politics and statesmanship published by the Claremont Institute. Many consider it a conservative intellectual answer to the liberal New York Review of Books...