Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things is like The Daily Show of its time, 1919. Business partners Abe Potash and Morris Perlmutter trade zingers about the news of the day. And such news! -- the end of World War I, peace talk, and wartime President Woodrow Wilson's idea of the League of Nations. But not for Abe and "Mawruss" are the affairs of state. They're in the "cloak and suit trade" and all they want is to find out the latest hemlines from Paris. It's just their luck, they wind up with nothing to do in the City of Lights but read the newspaper and hash out Wilson's efforts make peace. The comical commentators get little introduction here from humorist Montague Glass: They didn't need it. Glass spun their observations into decades of stories, plays and even movies. Potash and Perlmutter offer a painless way to learn history. The surprise is how contemporary they sound about international crooks and press conferences where nobody learns anything. Perlmutter can't remember the French president's name. "Call him Lefkowitz," Potash says. "I'll know who you mean."

Author Biography

Montague Marsden Glass (1877 - 1934) was a British-American Jewish lawyer and writer of short stories, plays and film scripts. His greatest success came with the creation of his fictional duo Abe Potash and Mawrus Perlmutter, who appeared in three books, a play and several films. Glass was born in Manchester, England, but spent his childhood in Baguley, in Cheshire. Glass' father worked in the linen and cotton trade. The Glass family moved to New York in 1890, in pursuit of Glass' father's business interests. Glass married Mary Caroline Patterson in 1908. He attended The College of the City of New York and New York University Law School. After qualifying for the bar, Glass practiced law for several years while writing semi-professionally on the side. In 1909, Glass abandoned the practice of law to write full-time. Glass' transition from law to professional writing coincided with the emergence of the a pair of characters that would prove to be his most enduringly popular creations: Abe Potash and Mawrus Perlmutter.