Endorsements

• "Ever run a Jewish prep school in Georgia? Me, neither, but after reading Smoke and Mirrors I feel as though I have. It's all here: the cast of thousands, the tsuris, the mishegoss. The anxious students, the ex-Mossad security cadre, the insufferable parents. The ruthless student journalist, the no-nonsense nurse, the beleaguered coach. You'll laugh, you'll smile, you'll worry about college acceptance letters. Mazel tov to Troy and Parry, who have created a world. It's not The World to Come, but it's a great world to come to."

  Ellis Weiner is an author and humorist who has previously worked as an editor of National Lampoon and a columnist for Spy Magazine. His humor has also appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, and The New York Times Magazine.

• "The Academy of Smoke and Mirrors is a layered and funny novel that not only made me laugh out loud but also lead me to reflect on my relationship with Judaism. I highly recommend this humorous yet thought-provoking book."

  Paul Slansky, author of The Clothes Have No Emperor: A Chronicle of the American '80s and six other books that savagely mock the idiots, hypocrites, and demagogues who masquerade as our leaders.

• "A refreshingly humorous 22nd-century Jewish offering, The Academy of Smoke and Mirrors - A Boarding School On the Brink by Alex Troy and Jim Parry, comprises a signed, sealed & delivered homage to Educators and Educational Leaders everywhere.

  We join our protagonist Jeff Taylor on his zany journey as Head of a Jewish Prep School in the South that is in crisis.

  Jeff Taylor brings his Wall Street know-how to the world of private education and Jewish education with all the Jewish chutzpah that this entails.

  We readers gain an inner view to his three sets of constituents to please: the students, the parents, the staff - Oy Vey. With Woody Allen-esque angst, plentiful wordplay and the observational absurdity of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, this novel amuses and entertains like brokering a meeting of The School of Rock and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel !

  Ultimately upbeat and endearingly funny this story inspires my Rabbinic blessing, Kol HaKavod!"

  Rabbi Mitchell M. Hurvitz, Head Rabbi, Temple Sholom, Greenwich Connecticut

• “Establishing a Jewish boarding school in rural Georgia? Whose crazy idea is that? It’s Alex Troy’s and Jim Parry’s, and their protagonist and anti-hero Jeff Taylor, reluctant Head of School at Hebrew Academy of Hampton Acres (HAHA, as everyone calls it), is a modern Job—confronting unruly staff, eccentric kids, entitled board members, looming bankruptcy, and this being Georgia, a lovable and un-kosher pig. The Academy of Smoke and Mirrors is a romp that is, well, an education.”

  Jonathan Stone, author of The Prison Minyan