Thomas Beller is the author of Seduc­tion The­o­ry, The Sleep-Over Artist, and How to Be a Man. He is a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to The New York­er​’s Cul­ture Desk, has edit­ed numer­ous antholo­gies (includ­ing two drawn from his web­site, Mr. Beller’s Neigh­bor­hood), and was a cofounder of the lit­er­ary jour­nal Open City. Beller is a first gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­can whose moth­er was born in Berlin and grew up in a Kib­butz in Israel. She is now a doc­u­men­tary film mak­er who has been nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award for her film The Rest­less Con­science, as well as being the recip­i­ent of numer­ous oth­er prizes and awards from film fes­ti­vals around the world. Beller’s father grew up in the Prater neigh­bor­hood in Vien­na, beneath the famous carousel, and was the last mem­ber of his fam­i­ly to leave the city, at the age of six­teen, in 1938.