That is How it Is - another impressive translation by Harvey Fink - offers more than fifty examples of the short pieces Moishe Nadir wrote, stories concerned, almost entirely, with America - "a land where people do not go for strolls, where no one drinks wine."

Perhaps New York City's greatest Yiddish writer, Moishe Nadir, was born Yitzchak Rayz in 1885 in Narayev, a village in eastern Galicia, then part of Austro-Hungary. Arriving in America in 1898, he published poetry, prose, and drama under a number of pseudonyms, finally settling on Moishe Nadir. He wrote for publications in the New York Yiddish press, in daily newspapers and popular humour magazines. Nadir's stories will enter your consciousness with a gentle knock, seduce you with their eloquence and wry observations, and challenge you with a minefield of sardonic humor.