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Award-winning research psychologist Michael E. Addis identifies and provides answers surrounding the long-unspoken epidemic of silence and vulnerability in men

Drawing on scientific research, as well as his own personal and clinical experience, award-winning research psychologist Michael E. Addis describes in this book an epidemic of personal, relational, and societal problems that are caused by the widespread invisibility of men’s vulnerabilities. From increasing rates of suicide among men, to alcohol abuse, to violence and school shootings, his research reveals the continued cost of staying silent when emotional, physical, or spiritual pain enters men’s lives.

In the spirit of such bestsellers as William Pollack’s Real Boys, Addis identifies the specific problems that result from men’s silence and invisibility, what causes them, and how they can be changed. Addis provides readers with compelling stories of the causes and consequences of silence and invisibility in real men’s lives. Invisible Men shows both male and female readers how they can break through the gauntlets that appear to protect men, but in reality cause severe harm to men, women, and families.

About Michael Addis

Michael E. Addis, Ph.D., has published more than seventy articles and books. He is a recipient of the American Psychological Association’s David Shakow Award and the New Researcher Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. Addis is a professor of psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and lives in central Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

“Michael Addis, a leading expert on the psychology of men, gives us a lens through which to see and understand the invisible men in our lives and provides a set of powerful tools to overcome the forces that keep men invisible. The messages and strategies in Invisible Men are unique and invaluable for men and for all the people who love them.”—Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Yale University and author of Women Who Think Too Much

Another pop psychology book about the need for men to get in touch with their emotions and break the silence that keeps their fears hidden.

Addis (Psychology/Clark Univ.; co-author: Overcoming Depression One Step at a Time, 2004, etc.) draws on research interviews, conversations with former clients of his counseling practice and personal experiences to delineate the problem he sees as men’s inability to recognize and speak out about their vulnerabilities. Anecdotes about men and their problems abound, making this an easy read. Keeping silent about their inner lives, writes Addis, is a survival strategy that boys adopt early in lives when they are learning to define themselves as masculine. Being silent about one’s feelings is not an inherently masculine trait, but a learned one, and being more open does not mean becoming more feminine. The author’s message about the silence and vulnerabilities of men and the harm that this can cause is directed toward women at least as much as toward men. Straightforward but somewhat repetitious chapters include questions for both sexes to ask themselves and exercises for both to perform, and simple charts and diagrams summarize his concepts. Addis counsels women, often the primary emotional caretakers of the men in their lives, to avoid “mothering,” and instructs men in how to overcome their fears, take stock of their relationships and improve their friendships with other men. The penultimate chapter focuses on handling life’s most stressful events: divorce, job loss, illness and death of a loved one—times when men may need help, even professional help, but are reluctant to seek it. In a weak final chapter, Addis looks briefly at the ways in which societal change can alleviate the problem—e.g., developing public policies that make men’s well being a major social concern.

User-friendly self-help more likely to be read by a wife concerned about her husband’s mental health than by the invisible man himself. – Kirkus Review

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Some of you are probably saying “huh?”    That’s what my first reaction was too when I received this email from an author who wrote a true crime story and received a review from us:

I am puzzled by the comments about credibility.  In the back of the book I have explained who the sources were.  I have a feeling the reader is not well versed on the [removed] or the [removed.] [At this point she gave a run-down of justifications. Then she said] It seems like the readers should look into such things before they denounce the credibility of what the author has written.

This comment was to a reviewer’s response after reading the book:

The lack of credible, named sources made the story less than convincing…[the book] was an amusing, entertaining book, and if taken as light reading, quite charming, but I would certainly not risk quoting it as an authoritative source on anything [removed]-related.

In defense of the reviewer she is well versed about the murder of a well known politician the author referenced in the story.  Regardless, the author should never expect the reader to know about every incident that is referred to in the book.  Actually, in many cases readers want to know more so that’s why they choose to read the specific book. It is extremely important to let your reader know where the actual information came from.  If it’s your own experience, say so…if it is given to you by an anonymous informant then say so but qualify the informant.  Don’t just write it as fact because in reality, you don’t know it is fact.

The author sent me another email:

I write True Crime stories.  They are actual cases, usually cold cases, that I have been hired to solve.
The last two books have involved [removed.]  It is important, if I want to earn my pay, to find people who know what really happened.  ANYONE, who is willing to talk to me, to give me facts, about the case IS NOT willing to give me their real name or they expect me to honor their wishes to remain anonymous if mention in the book.  They want to continue living and I don’t want sued! In my last book, [title removed,] I was criticized for not using actual names of my sources.  One of them I never saw as she had a room partition between herself and me.  She was a show girl with [name removed] in Vegas and knew [names removed.]  At the time of the interview she was in her 80′s.  Willing to tell me what she knew BUT without her name being used. That was just one example…there are so many others.  The same thing is true with the current manuscript I’m writing and I keep thinking back to the person who said I must identify my sources….I DON’T THINK SO !!!
Do readers and reviewers understand that my credibility and trust is gone with the wind if I do?  Trusting your advise and expertise, I’m asking you how to get around this?

Irene, please know that I appreciate your time in this!  But apparently, it is a problem that, surely, others have faced with reviewers. True crime is not a novel and the research is generally exhausting and often compromising.  To give the actual names of sources can be as deadly as the crime itself.

Actually, no…your credibility or trust is the last thing readers are thinking of.  Sorry, but that’s a fact.  They want “true” facts and the only thing they want is informant credibility. Informants are just that – informants and their identity is to be kept a secret, however; there are ways to get around that and give the reader the credibility they are seeking.  Some suggestions are:

1.  Let the reader know that the informant is confidential – and explain, for e.g. that there was a wall between you and the informant.  Explain how the interview was arranged in the first place and give enough detail about the person to make her or him a real.

2.  Give the informant a name, explain it’s a pseudonym but reference to an explanation. (Using footnotes or glossary.)

3.  Explanations/glossary could be at the back or front of the book but when the reference is made in the story there needs to be place the reader can go to find out about the informant. (These can be numbered.)  Also explain why the informant doesn’t want his/her name used.

4.  Give as much information as possible about the informant without disclosing a name.  If in the case of a show girl, because there would be a lot of them and not only one, some detailed info can be given to make the informant more plausible.

5.  Explain reasons why they want to be kept confidential – who they feared and what they feared would happen if their identities became known. Don’t assume the reader would have guessed they would be killed, deported or imprisoned.

6.  If using information from a newspaper or any other written words be sure to reference.  Even images of the article would give credibility readers are seeking.

7. Use pictures that would depict informants with their faces blurred.  There are a lot of royalty free images that can be purchased very inexpensively online.  Even though the face can’t be seen there is a picture that gives credibility. The TV series “Dateline” does this all the time. They show people with faces blurred – we never question if it’s the actual person and we assume it is.  Maybe it isn’t, who knows?  We accept the blurred out face as being credible.

8.   Always think of “justification” when giving true claims….and explain they are only claims.

And remember, readers/reviewers will not research – they expect to get the truth from you, however; the truth has to be justified and authenticated.

Do you, as a reader, research the topic before you read?  Do you, as an author, expect your readers to do research before they read your book?

Do you have any other suggestions to add to this list?  I’d like to hear from you here

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Almost Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Sir Richard Branson and Ronan Keating are taking on the ultimate challenge. They’re captaining a team to swim the gruelling waters of the Irish Sea and raise £1million!

The Swim is a celebrity-led challenge to cross the Irish Sea from Holyhead to Dublin in a 10-person relay. Almost three times the length of the English Channel, this 56-mile swim hopes to raise £1 million for Cancer Research UK’s lifesaving work.

Will this team of celebrity adventurers beat the odds to swim the most treacherous waters off the British coast? Richard and Ronan are to be joined by Gadget Show host Jason Bradbury, Snog, Marry, Avoid presenter and pop star Jenny Frost and have most recently been joined by Strictly Come Dancing star Pamela Stephenson.

In the time that it is likely to take The Swim team to cross the Irish Sea (40 hours), around 1,400 people will have been diagnosed with cancer in the UK. So Cancer Research UK is calling on everyone to get involved in The Swim and help raise £1million for the charity’s lifesaving work.

There are two ways to help: people can sponsor the team at http://bit.ly/sponsortheswim or sign up to their own swimming challenge and ask family and friends to sponsor them at www.the-swim.co.uk.

To help people with their own swimming challenge, increase their fitness levels and raise as much as they can for Cancer Research UK’s work into the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, each swimmer will be given an exclusive personal swim page. Through this they will be able to log their swims and share progress with family and friends to encourage sponsorship. There is also an iPhone app to help you track your swims when you are out and about.

To sponsor The Swim team and find out more about how you can help them raise £1 million please visit  www.the-swim.co.uk

More Information

For more information please contact the Cancer Research UK press office:

Charlotte Beaty-Pownall 0207 3469 5454 charlotte.beaty-pownall@cancer.org.uk

About The Swim

• The Swim is a unique celebrity-led challenge to swim the treacherous Irish Sea from Holyhead to Dublin in a relay team, a distance of 56 miles, almost three times the length of the English Channel, to raise £1 million towards Cancer Research UK’s lifesaving work. It will take place in September this year.
• Anyone can sponsor the team at www.virginmoneygiving.com/team/theswim
• All swimmers can get involved and help raise £1 million by setting themselves a personal swimming challenge and asking their family and friends to sponsor them. Visit www.the-swim.co.uk for further details

About Cancer Research UK

• Cancer Research UK is the world’s leading cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research
• The charity’s groundbreaking work into the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer has helped save millions of lives.  This work is funded entirely by the public.
• Cancer Research UK has been at the heart of the progress that has already seen survival rates double in the last forty years.
• Cancer Research UK supports research into all aspects of cancer through the work of over 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses.
• Together with its partners and supporters, Cancer Research UK’s vision is to beat cancer.
• For further information about Cancer Research UK’s work or to find out how to support the charity, please call 020 3469 6699 or visit www.cancerresearchuk.org

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AMERICAN MALE PROSTITUTE

How I (Almost) Got A Book Deal Through Sex, Lies, And Deceit

Today’s publishing world is divided into two principle sections. First, there is the exclusive pool of traditional publishers, and, second, the help-yourself shark tank represented by the so-called vanity publishers.

Vanity publishers have a significant edge over traditional publishers in regards to brutality, business sense, and profitability. They ruthlessly pursue the infinite supply of aspiring writers who, in turn, are rejected by traditional publishers or literary agents. Ironically, in the world of traditional publishing, authors are rejected not necessarily due to lack of talent. Vanity publishers accept everybody and everything. No questions asked. Just pay your bill, but don’t come crying to them when you can’t sell a copy of your book.

The question remains, what does it take these days to get a book deal with a traditional publisher? What do you do when, hypothetically, you are running out of time and mere talent is not the be-all and end-all?

Stuart Martin Berry has found the answer: If you can’t impress them with your talent, baffle them with your bull-shit. [Read more, including an excerpt]

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It seems that ever since mankind was kicked out of the Garden of Eden for eating the forbidden fruit, we’ve been trying to get back in. Or at least, we’ve been wondering where the Garden might have been. St. Augustine had a theory, and so did medieval monks, John Calvin, and Christopher Columbus. But when Darwin’s theory of evolution permanently altered our understanding of human origins, shouldn’t the search for a literal Eden have faded away? Not so fast.

In Paradise Lust, Brook Wilensky-Lanford introduces readers to the enduring modern quest to locate the Garden of Eden on Earth. It is an obsession that has consumed Mesopotamian archaeologists, German Baptist ministers, British irrigation engineers, and the first president of Boston University, among many others. These quixotic Eden seekers all started with the same brief Bible verses, but each ended up at a different spot on the globe: Florida, the North Pole, Ohio, China, and, of course, Iraq. Evocative of Tony Horwitz and Sarah Vowell, Wilensky-Lanford writes of these unusual characters and their search with sympathy and wit. Charming, enlightening, and utterly unique, Paradise Lust is a century-spanning history that will take you to places you never imagined.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Reviews

“Part adventure story, part historical narrative, Wilensky-Lanford spins the history of explorers who searched for the Garden’s precise earthly coordinates. With adept, well-researched prose, she traces how, from four verses in Genesis … scientists and pseudo-scientists, preachers and theologians, have claimed ‘scientific proof’ of Paradise’s location—in Iraq, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, Florida, Ohio, the North Pole, and elsewhere…. Quick-witted and quirky … Wilensky-Lanford isn’t satisfied with asking only “where,” she also deftly explores “why?”… meditating not so much on the Garden, but on humanity’s first steps from it.” —Publishers Weekly

“There is great pleasure to be taken from Brook Wilensky-Lanford’s affectionate, witty, and carefully-researched survey of crackpot Biblical archaeology, past and present. But the real prize is in the wisdom: including the point that modern science, despite its fancy track suit and pneumatic shoes, chases just as desperately as did the naked and barefoot ancients after their always-elusive quarry, Truth.” —Les Standiford, author of Bringing Adam Home

“Be wary, reader, of this tempting fresh fig of a book. If you bite you shall perhaps acquire more knowledge than you counted on and experience an undue degree of bliss. … The search for a literal Eden is a more American story than you might think. Wilensky-Lanford delivers her comprehensive survey with a wit and levity that serves as perfect fulcrum to the doomed gravity of her subjects.” —J.C. Hallman, author of In Utopiaand The Hospital for Bad Poets

About the Author

Brook Wilensky-Lanford grew up on Mount Desert Island, Maine, studied religion at Wesleyan University, and is a graduate of Columbia University’s M.F.A. program in nonfiction. She has written for The Huffington Post, Salon, Triple Canopy, Killing the Buddha, Lapham’s Quarterly, and The Exquisite Corpse. She lives in the Garden State.

Review

In the beginning, Paradise Lust seems a light-hearted jaunt through a set of biographies and portraitures of men who have sought to locate the Garden of Eden (literally!) on today’s map of the world. Wilesky-Lanford’s cast of characters is a motley crew – and she clearly enjoys exposing the little insanities that drive each of them to the quest. But these tales, together, tell a much deeper story: the Garden of Eden, she says, “has always been located both in the original past and in the idealized future” (92). Taking Darwin’s Origin of Species as her starting point, Wilensky-Lanford cleverly manages to both pit literal Christianity against evolution and allow them to co-exist: “Those who looked for Eden . . . would have to answer at least two questions: not only where was Eden, but, more important, what was Eden?” (xviii).

The nuances of the many Edens she finds are delightful and insightful and move the book from a read for idle curiosity to a self-reflective history of our origins. One Eden is the silent revolution from hunting and gathering to farming – “the moment where humans began to control their environment, instead of being controlled by it. What bigger transition could there be? All of human history depends on that first person who realized: I can do this myself . . . .” (240). Another Eden is simply a new take on an old Babylonian myth. But “if the story of the Fall wasn’t original, how could it be sacred?” And of course, Eve’s role in why we left the Garden of Eden is always on trial. In one history, Wilensky-Lanford discovers that God “wanted Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge” because the serpent – aka the welfare-state – “wanted to keep Eve . . . barefoot and pregnant, forever.” (171)

The many meanings and stories that make up Paradise Lust are at times too loosely connected and for this, Wilensky-Lanford relies on the reader to hold multiple threads at once. But from Ohio to Mongolia to Florida to Iraq and Tahiti, her analysis of what was Eden leaves even those of us who didn’t go to Sunday school eager to learn more about our origins and our world today. As Wilesnky-Lanford concludes, “That’s the essential paradox of the search. Eden has to be erased in order for it to be Eden. A paradise isn’t paradise until it’s lost.” (253). – Sunny Daly, Amazon.Com Customer Review

Which Way to the Garden of Eden?

The New York Times Book Review – August 5, 2011 (Excerpt)

Most people probably think the search for a “real” Garden of Eden was abandoned centuries ago. With so many modern scientific advances, the discovery of fossil evidence from early ages and, of course, the advance of Darwin’s theory of evolution, surely no one would be so mad as to look for an actual Eden. Brook Wilensky-­Lanford’s first book, “Paradise Lust,” suggests just the opposite.

It seems there have always been — and continue to be — little armies of Eden chasers who take this quest very seriously, carrying their search to the most unlikely places. Wilensky-Lanford carries the reader along on some of these journeys, from the North Pole to rural Ohio, evoking the lives and characters of a collection of eccentrics that includes a professional archaeologist and a preacher, as well as a Chinese businessman and a British irrigation engineer. What these disparate types have in common is their insistence that they have finally and truly cracked the biblical code.

They all begin with the verses in Genesis. “A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches” — namely the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris and the Euphrates. But while it’s easy to find the Tigris and the Euphrates, which run from Turkey through Iraq into the Persian Gulf, the locations of the Gihon and the Pishon remain distinctly murky. A further complication is the theory that today’s Tigris and Euphrates are not the same as the biblical ones, a notion that allows, as Wilensky-Lanford puts it, room for a more “fanciful geography.”

“Fanciful” might be putting it mildly. William Fairfield Warren, the first president of Boston University, published a book in the late 19th century in which he argued that Eden was located at the North Pole — or, at least, that it had been there before the Flood. The river that watered the Garden, Warren proclaimed, was not a river at all but rain. Eden, he added, was populated with people “of giant stature” and its landscape dotted with enormous trees closely related to the California redwoods. (Conveniently, sequoias can reproduce asexually, making them perfect for an Eden before the Fall.) [Read the full article...]

A research-heavy yet light account of Garden of Eden seekers

Boston.Com Book Review – August 8, 2011 (Excerpt)

In the beginning, Brook Wilensky-Lanford was confronted with a piece of family lore that she couldn’t wrap her mind around.

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Boiled Peanuts

A Novel by John Patrick Doyle

A Peeping Tom Goes Nuts Over A Blind Girl

Paul Kirk is a librarian and one of his town’s quirkier residents.  In a childhood home lacking parents (his mother dying of MS and his father an alcoholic) Paul had imagined himself a member of the neighboring family. Now in his late twenties, Paul vicariously participates in the households of his community. His peeping-Tom proclivities express his awkward need for social bonding.

Then Paul meets Bronwyn, a counselor who is lovely, independent and blind. She has inherited her Aunt Phyllis’ house and is newly arrived in town. When Paul first sees Bronwyn at church, he knows he wants to be part of her life. As the mystery of Aunt Phyllis unfolds, Bronwyn and Paul become more deeply involved as they learn about Phyllis’ secrets and how they relate to Bronwyn and her past, but Paul’s peeping ways may ruin it all. [Read more...]

Boiled Peanuts is available through Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

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Revolutionary retail guru Paco Underhill is back with a completely revised edition of his classic, witty bestselling book on our ever-evolving consumer culture — full of fresh observations and important lessons from the cutting edge of retail, which is taking place in the world’s emerging markets. New material includes:

• The latest trends in online retail — what retailers are doing right and what they’re doing wrong — and how nearly every Internet retailer from iTunes to Amazon can drastically improve how it serves its customers.

• A guided tour of the most innovative stores, malls and retail environments around the world — almost all of which are springing up in countries where prosperity is new. An enormous indoor ski slope attracts shoppers to a mall in Dubai; an uber luxurious Sao Paolo department store provides its customers with personal shoppers; a mall in South Africa has a wave pool for surfing.

The new Why We Buy is an essential guide — it offers advice on how to keep your changing customers and entice new and eager ones.

Editorial Reviews

“At last, here is a book that gives this underrated skill the respect it deserves.”– The New York Times

” Thanks, Mr. Underhill, for explaining in clear and witty prose why my shopping habits are not all that crazy. Now, please tell my wife!”– Bob Gale, writer/producer, Back to the Future trilogy

“I’m in love. And if I didn’t have a devoted husband, two kids and a crushing mortgage, I swear I’d throw caution to the wind and run away with Paco Underhill…fascinating.”– Rocky Mountain News (Denver)

“Why We Buy is a funny and insightful book for people on both sides of the retail counter.”– Michael Gould, CEO, Bloomingdale’s

Review

The first four parts of this book are absolutely fascinating. It’s an in depth look at the psychology of shopping and it is exactly what the title promises. Underhill’s company gets paid to spy on people in stores and see what they’re doing wrong and right. The gems in this book are the anecdotes and the specific revelations about how any obstacle you put in the way of a shopper drops your sales figures. Any way you can make life easier raises your sales. This all seems sort of obvious, but most people running the businesses don’t think it through.

One example is the entry zone at the front of the store – you’d think that’s a prime location for signage, deals, brochures, etc. But when you’re headed through the door into the store you see almost nothing and stop for almost nothing, and then (in America) you tend to drift to the right and then you’re ‘in’ the store. If you put a store directory just inside the door, nobody uses it. Move it back a bit so you can find it once you’re into the store and suddenly it’s heavily utilized. He has hard observational data for all these, so they’re compelling in addition to being fascinating.

And of course all the bad examples are great fun to read (seniors crawling along floors trying to read labels on badly shelved medicine), as are the descriptions of how different groups shop (male vs female, old vs young, parents vs. single, etc.) The whole book is pretty much a commercial for Underhill’s company, but it’s still informative and fun reading.

Where the book falls down is at the end, where a chapter on the Internet is shoehorned in and a perfunctory shout out to each of Envirosell’s worldwide branches is included.

Even though I think he’s more right than wrong, the whole Internet chapter comes across as a confused old guy muttering about how he doesn’t get that new fangled rock music. He complains about how many review sites there are, for instance, and has no idea how much it can transform the shopping experience (and not just be a poor supplement). Worse, the book’s entire premise is mostly about how you need observational data of real customers because they’ll always do things you don’t expect (can’t argue there), but he HAS no data on this topic, so it’s just not compelling. I can’t help but think the whole chapter is just in there because ‘we need something about teh intertubes’.

The ‘Come Fly With Me’ chapter must be in here because he needs to professionally backscratch all his international partners. It’s pretty much useless and turns a mild commercial into an infomercial.

If I sound too negative, please don’t take it that way – I’m just trying to tell you why this isn’t a five star book. You have 220 pages of ‘awesome and can’t put it down’ book followed by 40 pages of ‘what the hell am I doing reading this’ slog, then another 30 pages of fairly decent reading. If you don’t read those two chapters, it’s a five star book! – oldtaku, Amazon.Com Customer Review

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Crimson Dawn

Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rouge vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself.

CRIMSON DAWN by Ronnie Massey is not just another vampire novel. Yes, the story line includes the favorites of all young adults – plus those who stayed young-at-heart – such as vampires, werewolves, witches, and fairies, but they represent a framework that is seamlessly incorporated in a captivating story that is well worth to be characterized as extraordinary. [Read More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

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Despite continued pay inequities, in 2005 young women under 30 earned more than men for the first time in U.S. history, signaling greater influence in the consumer market. Underhill, founder of Envirosell, Inc., marketer to major retailers, draws on market research and personal observations to detail the ways that women are influencing design, marketing, and service in industries from car manufacturing to architecture to banking. What do women want? Cleanliness, control, safety, and consideration.

Women are behind the growth in the health-food industry, new urbanist communities that offer the geographic closeness of cities and the safety of suburbia, and contemporary kitchens with open plans and appliances geared toward convenience. Underhill notes that trends continue to favor the influence of women with the reduction of the manufacturing sector that needs muscle, greater control over women’s reproductive lives, and an education system that suits girls more than boys. Underhill offers good insights, though his tone seems a bit off sometimes, and female readers are likely to wonder how the same material might have yielded different insights from a woman writer. –Vanessa Bush, Booklist

Women are wealthier, more powerful and more independent than ever. In What Women Want, marketing expert Paco Underhill explains that smart businesses are adapting to accommodate women — a group that often makes up more than half of their customers, in many cases. Take, for example, the hotel shower curtains that once hung from straight rods over the bathtub. Now, you’ll often find shower curtains hanging on a curved track. But how is that about women? Well, women are more likely to be conscious that there have been hundreds of strangers staying in that hotel room over the past year and that the shower curtain isn’t likely to get wiped down after each visit. Underhill believes the concern about hygiene is wired into women’s systems — and the bowed shower curtain is an improvement, then, because it doesn’t touch you while you wash. – NPR Book Review

Editorial Reviews

“Paco Underhill is Sherlock Holmes for retailers. . .This sleuth makes shoppers view stores with more critical eyes.” –Trish Donnally, San Francisco Chronicle

“The guru of retail consulting offers a wealth of insight into what makes a successful shopping experience for both buyer and seller.” –Craig Ryan, The Oregonian

Review

Having enjoyed and learned a lot from retail expert Paco Underhill’s previous two books, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping–Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond and Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping by the Author of Why We Buy, I was pleased to see he has another book out. Despite the cringe-worthy title, I wanted to give Underhill the benefit of a doubt. In What Women Want: The Global Marketplace Turns Female-Friendly, he makes the observation that women do a lot of shopping and not just for clothes and food. They have a say in big ticket items like cars and houses and appliances. Many women are not even married, they work for a living, and buy their own houses, cars, and appliances. Hear me roar.

It’s a sure bet that Underhill didn’t write this book for women at all. He uses awkward phrasing, making it sound as if he’s reporting anthropological findings about a colony of exotic specimens with quaint shopping habits. He shies away from the word “woman” most of the time, opting for “female” and “female of the species.”

His major finding is that women like things clean. Clean stores, clean hotel rooms, clean restrooms. Here’s a flash for you retailers out there – men like things clean too.

There are some useful nuggets in the book, if you’re willing to wade through frequent speculations that women like curvy surfaces as opposed to more manly straight edges. For instance, in the chapter about hotels, Underhill notes that women are more concerned with security than men are. That means that a woman may not appreciate it when the clerk at the reception desk calls her by name several times as she checks in, so that everyone in the lobby knows her name. Good advice.

Unfortunately, you have to put up with a lot of generalizations and spurious factoids, such as “In general, females find it much easier to orient their way around if they can look at a 3D map.” Here’s a mysterious observation on parking lots in the Netherlands where – “Perhaps because of biological imperatives … females are more comfortable positioning themselves – and their small cars – over something rather than within two defined lines. Men, owing to their own biology … are more at ease navigating their vehicles in between a target.”

I’d like to think that Underhill did actual research to come up with his advice, maybe some surveys and questionnaires, gathering statistics and such, but if he did, he doesn’t mention it. We just have to take his word for it that “Reading … has always been a more traditionally female passion than a male one. It’s sedentary, meditative, personal. It’s passive (I mean that as a compliment)…”

To be fair, Underhill makes generalizations about men too, as if men don’t care if their hotel room or store restroom is clean, or that men are only about specs and power and don’t care at all about convenience and comfort. Most of the improvements Underhill suggests would be as appreciated by men as they would be by women. Clear instructions, thermostat controls in hotel rooms, clothes that fit, who doesn’t want those? – takingadayoff, Amazon.Com Customer Review

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Crimson Dawn

Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rouge vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself.

CRIMSON DAWN by Ronnie Massey is not just another vampire novel. Yes, the story line includes the favorites of all young adults – plus those who stayed young-at-heart – such as vampires, werewolves, witches, and fairies, but they represent a framework that is seamlessly incorporated in a captivating story that is well worth to be characterized as extraordinary. [Read More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

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In modern Britain, the working class has become an object of fear and ridicule. From Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard to the demonization of Jade Goody, media and politicians alike dismiss as feckless, criminalized and ignorant a vast, underprivileged swathe of society whose members have become stereotyped by one, hate-filled word: chavs.

In this groundbreaking investigation, Owen Jones explores how the working class has gone from “salt of the earth” to “scum of the earth.” Exposing the ignorance and prejudice at the heart of the chav caricature, one based on the media’s inexhaustible obsession with an indigent white underclass, he portrays a far more complex reality. Moving through Westminster’s lobbies and working-class communities from Dagenham to Dewsbury Moor, Jones reveals the increasing poverty and desperation of communities made precarious by wrenching social and industrial change, and all but abandoned by the aspirational, society-fragmenting policies of Thatcherism and New Labour. The chav stereotype, he argues, is used by governments as a convenient figleaf to avoid genuine engagement with social and economic problems, and to justify widening inequality.

Based on a wealth of original research, and wide-ranging interviews with media figures, political opinion-formers and workers, Chavs is a damning indictment of the media and political establishment, and an illuminating, disturbing portrait of inequality and class hatred in modern Britain.

Editorial Review

[A] thought-provoking examination of a relatively new yet widespread derogatory characterization of the working class in Britain … edifying and disquieting in equal measure. (Publishers Weekly )

Review

I hesitated to title this review ‘Class War’ – it seems so out-of-date, so ‘old Labour’. But that is what this book is about. It is about the sustained economic, social and ideological attack on the majority of the population of this country.

The idea of ‘chavs’ (US equivalent probably ‘trailer trash’) is, these days, so pervasive that as I read the first few chapters, I had my doubts. The book seemed merely an apologia for a post-industrial lumpenproletariat, a group of alienated misfits beyond the reach of the rest of society. But Jones’ analysis is far wider, deeper and more powerful than that and deserves as wide an audience as possible.

The book starts with a shocking comparison between the media coverage of Shannon Matthews and Madeleine McCann. The point is forcefully made that the coverage clearly showed a deep-rooted class prejudice – and ignorance. The McCann’s come from the same class as the majority of journalists, leader writers and ‘opinion formers’. The same journalists have virtually no experience of the world of Shannon Matthews. Jones make the point in a quote from Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror:

‘Increasingly, the lives of journalists have become divorced from those of the rest of us. ‘I can’t think of a national newspaper editor with school-age kids who has them in a state school,’ [Maguire] reflects. ‘On top of that, most journalists at those levels are given private medical insurance. So you’re kind of taken out of everyday life.’ (P27)

Jones continues:

‘More than anything, it is this ignorance of working-class life that explains how Karen Matthews became a template for people living in working-class communities. ‘Perhaps it’s because we’re all middle class that we tut at the tragic transition of aspirational working class to feckless, feral underclass, and sneer at the brainless blobs of lard who spend their days on leatherette sofas in front of plasma TVs, chewing the deep-fried cud over Jeremy Kyle,’ speculated commentator Christina Patterson. ‘We’ve got a word for them too: “Chavs”’ (P27)

(Jeremy Kyle is, in this context, roughly equivalent to Jerry Springer, but without the humour). So how did this come about? How has the whole working class come to be seen as a ‘feckless, feral underclass’? Jones continues with a look at ‘Class Warriors’. He suggests that:

‘Thatcherism fought the most aggressive class war in British history…Thatcher wanted to end the class war – but on the terms of the upper crust of British society. ‘Old fashioned Tories say there isn’t any class war,’ declared Tory newspaper editor Peregrine Worsthorne. ‘New Tories make no bones about it: we are class warriors and we expect to be victorious.’ (P48)

This class war was waged as an attack on collectivism – the promotion of an aggressive individualism that sees success or failure as a purely personal matter. Everyone should naturally aspire to be middle class. This is not simply the adoption of a neoliberal free market economic philosophy but also an essentially neoconservative cultural approach – defining whole working class communities as ‘chavs’. And it worked, thoroughly and conclusively:

‘Even before the advent of New Labour, Thatcherism had ensured that the working class would be bereft of political champions. ‘The real triumph was to have transformed not just one party, but two,’ as [Geoffrey] Howe was later to put it.’ (P71)

This reminded me very much of Peter Oborne’s ‘The Triumph of the Political Class’. Hardly a left-wing firebrand, Oborne details the formation of a metropolitan elite. Oborne suggests:

‘The Media Class and the Political Class share identical assumptions about life and politics. They are affluent, progressive, middle- and upper-middle class. This triumphant metropolitan elite has completely lost its links with a wider civil society.’ (‘The Triumph of the Political Class’, P259)

In case there was any doubt left, Jones states:

‘New Labour, through programmes like its welfare reform, has propagated the chav caricature by spreading the idea that people are poor because they lack moral fibre. Surveys show that attitudes towards poverty are currently harder than they were under Thatcher. If people observe that even Labour holds the less fortunate to be personally responsible for their fate, why should they think any different? No wonder the image of communities teeming with feckless chavs has become so ingrained in recent years.’ (P94)

Jones details how even supposedly liberal opinion can come to regard the working class as ‘chavs’. By emphasising that the working class are predominantly white working class, liberal opinion can ignore the economic underpinnings of class in favour of, as Jones puts it, ‘racialization’:

‘It’s one of the ways people have made their snobbery socially acceptable,’ says journalist Johann Hari: ‘by acting as though they are defending immigrants from the “ignorant” white working class.” (P116)

Although, in the past, television representations of working class life might have included Alf Garnett (US Archie Bunker), they also included shows like ‘The Likely Lads’ and ‘The Rag Trade’. Nowadays working class representations seem limited to Vicky Pollard, Wayne and Waynetta, ‘Shameless’ (soon to be a US remake) or even ‘Eden Lake’ (‘[i]t may not come as a surprise that the Daily Mail treated Eden Lake as though it was some kind of drama-documentary, quavering that it was ‘all too real’ and urging every politician to watch it.’ P131)

The representations of the working class have changed as the economic conditions have changed. With the deindustrialization of large swathes of the country, the ‘flexibilization’ of the work force, the increasing numbers of low-paid, low-skill and part-time jobs, the labour market has become an ‘hourglass’ economy:

‘highly paid jobs at one end, and swelling numbers of low-paid, unskilled jobs at the other. The middle-level occupations, on the other hand, are shrinking.’ (P152)

This has significantly weakened the opportunities for collective action. When staff turnover is high, union power is limited. The attacks on the remaining bastions of union activity continue. The latest targets are public sector workers who are currently being portrayed as over-paid, pampered and secure, which is so far from the truth it is almost laughable. Given the ‘hourglass economy’, commentators who point to a lack of working class aspiration are rather missing the point.

Even after all this, the class war continues. Turning on the radio this morning, I heard that Vince Cable (Lib Dem Business Secretary in the current coalition government) is threatening further anti-union legislation. In the same news bulletin, it was announced that ‘[over the last 30 years] wages grew by over 100% for judges, barristers and solicitors, while they fell by 5% for forklift truck drivers and 3% for packers and bottlers.’ (BBC ‘TUC: Wage stagnation over decades as income gap widens’).

After all that, it is very difficult to not agree with Owen Jones when he says:

‘…as a government of millionaires led by an Old Etonian prepares to further demolish the living standards of millions of working class people, the time has rarely been so ripe for a new wave of class politics.’ (P257)

- Diziet, Amazon.Com Customer Review

Get Your Bling and Adidas Tracksuit, Wayne, a British Class War Is Raging

The New York Times Book Review – July 12, 2011 (Excerpt)

Owen Jones’s first book, “Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class,” begins more like a Noël Coward play or a late-model Ian McEwan novel than like a rumbling social polemic. That is, it opens with a misfired witticism uttered at an elite East London dinner party.

Here’s how Mr. Jones sets the scene. “Sitting around the table were people from more than one ethnic group. The gender split was 50-50, and not everyone was straight. All would have placed themselves somewhere left of center politically.” Each guest “would have bristled at being labeled a snob.” Disaster arrived, as it always seems to, with the black currant cheesecake. That’s when the talk turned to the economic crisis. One of the party’s hosts joked: “It’s sad that Woolworth’s is closing. Where will all the chavs buy their Christmas presents?” The other guests tittered. Mr. Jones stewed.

The word chav, if your subscriptions to British periodicals have lapsed, is a noun that essentially means “ugly prole”: loutish, tacky, probably drunken and possibly violent. The stereotypical chav is a hormonal 20-something lad in an Adidas tracksuit, sideways Burberry baseball cap and bling, but women can be chavs, too. Think of Snooki with a cockney accent.

What angered Mr. Jones about the dinner party comment, he explains, is that the joke could easily have been rephrased thus: “It’s sad that Woolworth’s is closing. Where will the ghastly lower classes buy their Christmas presents?” This got him thinking. “How has hatred of working-class people become so socially acceptable?” he asks.

He writes, “It seems as though working-class people are the one group in society that you can say practically anything about.” Here he ignores fat people, but the two groups in the public mind often overlap.

How this came to pass in Britain, which has long revered its stalwart working class, is Mr. Jones’s primordial subject in “Chavs.” The book poses this principled question: How did the salt of the earth come to be viewed as the scum of the earth? [Read the full article...]

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Almost Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

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Ann Patchett has dazzled readers with her award-winning books, including The Magician’s Assistant and the New York Times bestselling Bel Canto. Now she raises the bar with State of Wonder, a provocative and ambitious novel set deep in the Amazon jungle.

Dr. Marina Singh, a research scientist with a Minnesota pharmaceutical company, is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have all but disappeared in the Amazon while working on what is destined to be an extremely valuable new drug, the development of which has already cost the company a fortune. Nothing about Marina’s assignment is easy: not only does no one know where Dr. Swenson is, but the last person who was sent to find her, Marina’s research partner Anders Eckman, died before he could complete his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the insect-infested jungle in hopes of finding her former mentor as well as answers to several troubling questions about her friend’s death, the state of her company’s future, and her own past.

Once found, Dr. Swenson, now in her seventies, is as ruthless and uncompromising as she ever was back in the days of Grand Rounds at Johns Hopkins. With a combination of science and subterfuge, she dominates her research team and the natives she is studying with the force of an imperial ruler. But while she is as threatening as anything the jungle has to offer, the greatest sacrifices to be made are the ones Dr. Swenson asks of herself, and will ultimately ask of Marina, who finds she may still be unable to live up to her teacher’s expectations.

In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, and a neighboring tribe of cannibals, State of Wonder is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss. It is a tale that leads the reader into the very heart of darkness, and then shows us what lies on the other side.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

Marina Singh gave up a career as a doctor after botching an emergency delivery as an intern, opting instead for the more orderly world of research for a pharmaceutical company. When office colleague Anders Eckman, sent to the Amazon to check on the work of a field team, is reported dead, Marina is asked by her company’s CEO to complete Anders’ task and to locate his body. What Marina finds in the sweltering, insect-infested jungles of the Amazon shakes her to her core. For the team is headed by esteemed scientist Annick Swenson, the woman who oversaw Marina’s residency and who is now intent on keeping the team’s progress on a miracle drug completely under wraps.

Marina’s jungle odyssey includes exotic encounters with cannibals and snakes, a knotty ethical dilemma about the basic tenets of scientific research, and joyous interactions with the exuberant people of the Lakashi tribe, who live on the compound. In fluid and remarkably atmospheric prose, Patchett captures not only the sights and sounds of the chaotic jungle environment but also the struggle and sacrifice of dedicated scientists. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The award-winning, New York Times best-selling author’s latest novel is being supported with an author tour, a national advertising campaign, blogger outreach, and a reading-group guide. –Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

Reader Review

I am an armchair escapist and that is why I love to read. I am thrilled whenever a novel can transport me to another reality…and I was indeed transported, as well as held suspended in a state of wonder, by every single page of this highly emotional and understatedly intelligent novel by Ann Patchett ~ State of Wonder.

With soaring prose that is raw yet elegantly constructed, Patchett penetrates a world of science and adventure, human connection and personal discovery. Patchett’s storytelling is unfailingly compelling and her rapport with her subject matter is stunning. The science with which she propels this exciting and suspenseful plot is so highly believable and plausible, I never for a single moment thought it could be anything but true and authentic.

Patchett is meticulous in realizing her deep and complex characters and resolute in dissecting their values. The nuances and surprising angles of observation Patchett brings to bear upon her characters and on the situations in which they find themselves are constantly surprising and always provocative.

Her treatment of the indigenous cultures of the primeval jungles of Brazil is sensitive without being pandering. The oppressive atmosphere and the brutal reality of the Amazon rain forest which they inhabit, and where the pharmaceutical researchers are conducting their field studies about them, are all felt fully and intimately. Patchett’s portrayal of these native Amazon tribes who are so central to her story is realistic and tender without being clichéd and exploitive.

Marina Singh, the novel’s protagonist, is a lovely and very believable leading character. She is warm, loving, caring and complicated. She is also intelligent, skillful, trepid and troubled. Her journey to the Amazon is suspenseful and frightening but at the same time sensual and moving. It is a mission to uncover the details about the death of a friend; it is a field expedition for pharmaceutical research; and it is soul searching exploration of the intricate, heartrending ways she must seek her self-identity.

Rather than summarize the plot in more detail, I want to encourage other readers to experience this rich and vivid narrative for themselves. State of Wonder offers so very much! This is a novel of powerful and luminous writing, so fluid it is easily absorbed, yet every page is still profound. It is both a page-turner and a lyrical meditation about the difficult choices that must be made for love.

State of Wonder is a magical story that sings from every page, “holding up their burning sticks above their heads, pouring their souls up to heaven in a single voice of ululation.” The impact is so intense and lasting, this story will most assuredly not be forgotten.

I have become an absolute Patchett enthusiast! – Evie, Amazon.Com Customer Review

Will Perilous Trek to Amazon Reveal Heart of Darkness?

The New York Times Book Review – June 1, 2011 (Excerpt)

Dr. Marina Singh, the 42-year-old research scientist who is the heroine of “State of Wonder,” Ann Patchett’s most far-flung yet somehow least exotic book, is in her office at a large pharmaceutical company in Minnesota when the bad news arrives. Marina does unremarkable research on cholesterol. She is having an unremarkable affair with Mr. Fox, the company’s C.E.O. The bland, far-from-fantastic Mr. Fox arrives to tell her that her research partner, Dr. Anders Eckman, has died of a fever in a remote part of Brazil.

In Marina’s reaction to this terrible news, which comes on only the book’s second page, Ms. Patchett gives a quick glimpse of how crystalline and exquisite her prose can be. Marina suddenly grasps why people faced with sudden shock are often advised to sit down. “There was inside of her a very modest physical collapse, not a faint but a sort of folding,” Ms. Patchett writes, “as if she were an extension ruler and her ankles and knees and hips were all being brought together at closer angles.”

In another show of artfulness Ms. Patchett has embedded many small hints about her much larger novel in this miniature scene. The letter announcing Anders’s death comes from Dr. Annick Swenson, a fierce if not exactly irreproachable figure. Swenson was a medical school professor of Marina’s and was so tough that she stopped Marina’s medical career in its tracks. [Read the full article...]

Book review: ‘State of Wonder’

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – June 5, 2011 (Excerpt)

In Ann Patchett’s new novel, “State of Wonder,” an ordinary woman winds up in increasingly extraordinary circumstances. That woman is Marina Singh, a 42-year-old pharmaceutical researcher who travels to a remote part of the Amazon after receiving news that her colleague Anders has died there.

The dutiful daughter of an American mother and an Indian father who divorced when she was young, Singh seems an unlikely choice for a jungle adventure. Despite her dark looks, which set her apart, she feels truly at home in Minnesota with its chill temperatures and wide-open prairies. She returned there after her training and likes her quiet laboratory job. She also likes the man in charge of the company where she works — the widowed Mr. Fox, and yes, “silver fox” is implied — with whom she has a budding, if secret, relationship.

It is this relationship, however, that draws Singh into the puzzle of her lost colleague. The company has been financing the Amazonian work of the formidable Dr. Swenson, under whom Singh once studied. The exact location of Swenson is unknown, and she has cut off communications. Anders, an amiable scientist who shared a lab with Singh, was sent to Brazil to track down Swenson and assess her progress on a new drug. That drug is so secret that using outsiders to check on its development is out of the question; even as Singh agrees to go, Fox is reluctant to tell her exactly what it is. [Read the full article...]

Author Ann Patchett Opens Own Indie Bookstore

NPR Book Review – November 16, 2011 (Excerpt)

The world of independent bookstores has a new member: Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tenn., opened its doors on Wednesday. The store has a marquee name behind it — it is co-owned by best-selling novelist Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder and many others. Patchett talks with NPR’s Melissa Block about first-day jitters, and why she decided to open a small, independent bookstore at a time when similar stores are closing:

On what the bookstore looks like on opening day

“It is beautiful, Melissa; I wish you were here. The ceiling is incredibly high, and it’s pale blue, and the walls are very warm, and we have floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. It’s opening day, but we’re still doing a lot: We’re filling up the card rack right now and the magazine rack and learning how to use the cash register. It’s exciting. It’s crazy.”

On how little the store is, and why small size matters

“Compared to the two bookstores that closed here in Nashville in the last year — Borders and Davis-Kidd [Booksellers], which were both over 30,000 square feet — yes, we are a shoebox of a bookstore [at 2,500 square feet]. But this is the way bookstores used to be. This is the bookstore of my childhood, and I feel fantastic being back here. … [Read the full article...]

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Almost Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

In twenty-two original essays, leading historians reveal the radical impulses at the founding of the American Republic. Here is a fresh new reading of the American Revolution that gives voice and recognition to a generation of radical thinkers and doers whose revolutionary ideals outstripped those of the Founding Fathers.

While the Founding Fathers advocated a break from Britain and espoused ideals of republican government, none proposed significant changes to the fabric of colonial society. As privileged and propertied white males, they did not seek a revolution in the modern sense; instead, they tried to maintain the underlying social structure and political system that enabled men of wealth to rule. They firmly opposed social equality and feared popular democracy as a form of “levelling.”

Yet during this “revolutionary” period some people did believe that “liberty” meant “liberty for all” and that “equality” should be applied to political, economic, and religious spheres. Here are the stories of individuals and groups who exemplified the radical ideals of the American Revolution more in keeping with our own values today. This volume helps us to understand the social conflicts unleashed by the struggle for independence, the Revolution’s achievements, and the unfinished agenda it left for future generations to confront.

About the Authors

Alfred F. Young is professor emeritus of history at Northern Illinois University and was a senior research fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Gary B. Nash is professor of history emeritus and director of the National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.

Ray Raphael is the author of A People’s History of the American Revolution, Founding Myths, and several other books on the nation’s founding. He lives in northern California.

Finding More Founders

The New York Times Book Review – May 20, 2011 (Excerpt)

Historians refer to the trend as Founders’ Chic: the recent flurry of interest in biographies of the “great white men” of our nation’s founding generation. Although George Washington has consistently attracted Americans’ attention since Parson Weems’s biography appeared in 1800, during the last decade published examinations of Washington’s contemporaries have multiplied dramatically. Take John Adams. By my rough count, he alone or in conjunction with other men has been the subject of 19 biographical studies and five documentary collections since 2001. Two more books have examined his marriage to Abigail Smith; she herself has warranted two separate biographies. Remarkably, a recent search in the Cornell library catalog for the phrase “founding fathers” in titles of books on American history published since 2001 identified 37 volumes.

“Revolutionary Founders” might seem at first glance to be just another iteration of the genre. But its subtitle — “Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation” — differentiates it from the rest. So too does its introduction. The three editors inform their readers that they hope to correct the image of the Revolution found in most textbooks, an odd goal because one of them, Gary B. Nash, is a lead author of a major textbook. The editors assert bluntly that the gentry who signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution “opposed popular democracy and social equality. . . . They did not hold fundamental values that we accept as common currency today.” The book’s goal, they explain, is to help Americans “grasp the full scope of the American Revolution” by taking “seriously its most progressive participants” and incorporating “them into our national narrative.” [Read the full article...]

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Imperator

The Life of Gaius Julius Caesar

A Novel by Philip Katz

“Imperator – The Life of Gaius Julius Caesar” by Philip Katz is a fictional recreation of the life of the greatest of all Romans, Gaius Julius Caesar. It is a personal memoir, the inside story of his world as viewed through his eyes, written in the first person, suppressed by Caesar’s successors, only to be rediscovered in modern times. [More...]

Available in all good bookstores and Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and more.

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What if you found out that your grandfather-the man who had been a demanding, magnetic presence throughout your childhood-was a Nazi SS officer? This is the confession that Martin Davidson, already into middle age, received from his mother upon his grandfather Bruno Langbehn’s death, and The Perfect Nazi is Davidson’s exploration, using the skills he honed as a documentary producer for the BBC, of the truth behind this dark family secret.

As Martin dove into his research, drawing on an astonishing cache of personal documents as well as eyewitness accounts of this historical period, he learned that Bruno’s story moved lock-step in time with the rise and fall of the Nazi party. He realized that his grandfather was in many ways the “perfect Nazi,” his individual experiences emblematic of the generation of Germans who would plunge the world into such darkness-and he discovered all that he would have to come to terms with.

Editorial Review

If it were not for BBC editor Davidson’s grandfather’s position as an officer in the Nazis’ SD “security police,” this would be only one more guilty memoir by the descendant of a mid-level Nazi. Davidson, however, succeeds in creating an overview not only of his maternal grandfather’s life and career but of his own search for truth. As family rumors and occasional comments implied, Bruno Langbehn was more than a retired dentist. An early Nazi Party member , and “disdain political anonymity,” Langbehn joined the SS in 1937. Selected for Heydrich’s elite SD, he specialized in investigating German “reactionaries” who opposed the Nazi regime. Later, Langbehn and his immediate family were transferred to Prague, where he participated in organizing “one of Himmler’s most desperate ideas”: the “Werewolf” resistance force to wage guerrilla warfare against the victorious Allies after the war’s end. Needless to say, “Werewolf” came to nothing. Langbehn escaped Allied justice and returned to Berlin, where he died in 1992. Above all, Langbehn emerges from this compelling account as an unrepentant fanatic whose grandson, Davidson, is understandably saddened by this family connection. While the book could have benefited from more details on some events of the war, this remains a disturbing account of the legacy of Nazism. – Publishers Weekly

Review

When Martin Davidson’s grandfather died in 1992, Davidson knew that the family had lost a colorful character. Davidson grew up in Scotland, and the times he saw his mother’s father, Bruno Langbehn, visiting from Germany, the man seemed at least at times a perfect grandfather, full of funny stories and jokes. Sure, he had lived through the Nazi onslaught and defeat, and like a lot of Germans of his generation, he still enjoyed gathering with his soldier buddies. When he died in 1992, that would have closed that family chapter, except that Davidson makes historical documentaries and got curious about the war history his grandfather never talked about. It turns out that Bruno Langbehn was not only a Nazi, but he was one of the first to sign up, before Hitler came to power, and not only had he been in the SS, he had been a loyal wearer of the death’s-head ring that was given out in person by Heinrich Himmler. Davidson’s curiosity led him (and his sister) to start digging in archives in Germany, America, and the Czech Republic. He also got members of his family to participate as much as they could; you can imagine how difficult this would have been for them. The result is _The Perfect Nazi: Uncovering My SS Grandfather’s Secret Past and How Hitler Seduced a Generation_ (Penguin / Viking), a unique look at a more-or-less ordinary guy and his participation in Nazism, the sort of participation that must have happened thousands of times in the furtherance of the Third Reich. Langbehn had successfully kept his Nazi role secret from the world; Davidson rightly has concluded that Langbehn’s crimes forfeit any claim to posthumous anonymity, and the resulting book is a fascinating case study.

Langbehn may have come under Hitler’s spell in 1926, with the future Führer becoming the sort of role model he had not previously had. He was one of the first to sign on, and as an early joiner he was eventually to get the Gold Party Badge (Nazis loved their medallions) which he could proudly wear on whatever uniform he adopted through the war. Langbehn was in training to become a dentist by day, and by night he put on his brownshirt, put his brass knuckles in his pocket, and went to drink with other youths of the same bent. The drinking spilled out of the beer halls, and he and his companions became streetbrawlers with a cause. When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, Langbehn became less a streetfighter than a party insider. He was there at the Nuremberg rallies, especially as a senior party member at the 1934 version which was forever commemorated on film by Leni Riefenstahl. Langbehn was a whistleblower within the SA brownshirts, but watched the organization decline in influence within the wartime Nazi machine. He left the SA in 1937 and moved up to the SS, in which he was a member until the war’s end. He was sent to Prague where during the war’s last days, he dodged Russians and Czech freedom fighters; he didn’t deserve to escape, but he did. He was able to make a return to Germany, and to remain in hiding under an assumed identity within a rural area. He would have heard all about the Nuremberg Trials of the top Nazis that had been captured, and then successor trials for their underlings, and so on downwards. Davidson explains that international politics saved Langbehn; there could have been many trials of lower rungs on the Nazi ladder, but the increasing tension between East and West took precedence. By 1949, he was officially in the clear; he dropped his assumed name, and began to ride the wave of postwar prosperity. He could drink with his buddies, though he might have fretted over “what might have been,” and he continued to harbor his personal racist grudges. He was never repentant. Davidson remembers him saying that Hitler was merely building an empire, just like Churchill wanted to do.

Davidson has written a valuable book that must have been painful for him and his family. Langbehn survived the war with his reputation intact, but it has succumbed to the detective work of his grandson. Langbehn was not the worst of Nazi offenders, just an earnest fellow traveler who was eager to do his part for a cause in which he believed. His grandfather’s life, which would be “so anonymous and ordinary” were it not brought out in this thoughtful and absorbing book, Davidson says might now play a useful role “as a cautionary tale, a living example of the harm even little men can achieve in times of historical madness.” – R. Hardy, Amazon.Com Customer Review

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Vampire Ascending

by Lorelei Bell Sabrina Strong is a Touch Clairvoyant who knows a secret. She knows her mother was turned into a vampire when Sabrina was ten. Now that she is grown up, a powerful magnate in the Chicago business world hires her to reveal the identity of who relentlessly murders vampires in his ultra-modern stronghold of a hotel. [Read More...] – Including an excerpt of the first chapter.

Vampire Ascending is now available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

It’s hard to reckon with the realization that a prominent scientist in a cutting-edge field, writing his first novel in his “spare time,” has created what may be the most gripping and engrossing thriller this reviewer has ever read in almost 50 years of thriller reading. But facts are facts, and the opinion is considered. McEuen has created an indelible hero in 85-year-old Liam Connor, a diminutive scientific giant. But Liam dies at the hands of a brilliant, merciless female assassin within the first 50 pages.

He is entrancing, and McEuen’s decision to kill him off so quickly shows authorial panache. Left to unravel a complex scheme to launch the “most devastating terrorist attack in human history” are Liam’s granddaughter, her nine-year-old son, and one of Liam’s colleagues, Jake Sterling, a Cornell physicist. McEuen, also a Cornell physicist, wisely writes about what he knows, science, nanoscience, and Cornel, but also shows a true gift for plotting, pace, characterization, and writerly clarity. He mines relatively little-known history about Japan’s horrific experiments with biological weapons in WWII. He offers brief, lucid disquisitions on science; notes that a large university is the ideal place to begin a global plague; posits that “synthetic biology” will surpass silicon microelectronics as the next big technological wave; and remarkably, he makes these ideas accessible to typical thriller aficionados. A stunning achievement. –Thomas Gaughan, Booklist

Review

Paul McEuen, a professor of physics at Cornell, makes good use of his scientific knowledge in “Spiral,” a provocative and frightening techno-thriller. The story opens in 1946, with biologist Liam Connor witnessing a horrifying scene of destruction from the deck of the USS North Dakota. Liam is a prodigy whose expertise includes “saprobic fungi, the feeders on the dead.” At twenty-two, he already has an impressive résumé, having spent four years at Porton Down, “the center of British chemical and germ weapons research.” Connor is dismayed to learn that the Japanese have a top-secret biological weapon derived from a species of fungus. If unleashed, this mycotoxin could cause widespread devastation. Although World War II is over, some Japanese soldiers cannot live with defeat; they are determined to strike back.

Sixty-four years pass. Liam is eighty-six, still works hard, and has a delightfully puckish sense of humor. He is a legend in his field and runs a laboratory in Cornell University, where he taught for half a century. He is a brilliant, versatile, and creative scientist who dotes on his granddaughter, Maggie, and his nine-year-old great-grandson, Dylan. Suddenly, Liam is attacked by a vicious and merciless predator. Why would someone want to destroy a Nobel Laureate who has spent his whole life sharing his knowledge with the world? The answer lies in a long-ago event that occurred on the USS North Dakota in the Pacific Ocean.

“Spiral” is fast-paced, engrossing, and greatly enhanced by fascinating technical details concerning robotics, nanotechnology, and microbiology. McEuen conveys a potent and timely message about the misguided decisions made by heads of state who crave military and political supremacy. The characters are generally well-drawn and include physicist Jake Sterling, a colleague of Liam’s who is attracted to Maggie. Jake and Maggie are heirs to Liam’s distinguished legacy, but they face a particularly menacing villain–World War II veteran, Hitoshi Kitano. For him, Japan’s surrender was the ultimate humiliation. He has vowed to bring America to her knees.

McEuen chills us with scenes of excruciating torture and grisly deaths, and there are a number of violent confrontations between our heroes and a sadistic female killer. In 1969, Michael Crichton wrote “The Andromeda Strain,” a terrifyingly realistic story about lethal microbes from outer space that land on earth. Paul McEuen, in his electrifying debut, describes a different but equally appalling threat–from individuals so consumed by hatred that they would use virulent weapons of bioterrorism to annihilate millions of people. Let us hope that this doomsday scenario remains a product of the author’s vivid imagination. – E. Bukowski, Amazon.Com Customer Review

Very, Very Bad Things, Very, Very Tiny Packages

The New York Times Book Review – March 13, 2011 (Excerpt)

Paul McEuen’s techno-thriller, “Spiral,” sounds like something written by Michael Crichton in his prime. It’s actually better than a lot of what Mr. Crichton wrote once his prime was over.

To tell a story in this vein the author must know a lot more than you do about some branch of arcane, potentially scary science. Mr. McEuen is a Cornell University physics professor whose areas of expertise, according to his faculty biography, include “the science and technology of nanoscience” and “novel fabrication techniques at the nanometer scale.” On the evidence of this book he is also knowledgeable about gene modification, fungi and biological weapons.

Surprise: The hero of “Spiral,” Jake Sterling, is an intrepid Cornell physics professor. And the story involves tiny, scalpel-footed robots, some no bigger than a mustard seed. These nanobots have been created by Liam Connor, a kindly old Nobel laureate who is eminent in “the fungus world” and uses these MicroCrawlers to tend his 400,000-specimen fungus farm, fondly known as the Gardens of Decay. Liam envisioned the crawlers as instruments of good. He was teaching them to create ethanol fuel for themselves by, for instance, breaking down old credit cards. He never meant to turn them into micro-demons. [Read the full article...]

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Vampire Ascending

by Lorelei Bell

Sabrina Strong is a Touch Clairvoyant who knows a secret. She knows her mother was turned into a vampire when Sabrina was ten. Now that she is grown up, a powerful magnate in the Chicago business world hires her to reveal the identity of who relentlessly murders vampires in his ultra-modern stronghold of a hotel.

Vampire Ascending is now available at Amazon.Com, Barnes & Noble, the publisher’s website, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Lorelei Bell see her section on this website.

It is unfortunate that both, the Farmer’s Almanac and the groundhog, were wrong about a mild winter and spring luring around the corner. However, being back in the house, pouring a cup of good Shelburne Falls Coffee (my favorite Costa Rican Tarrazu), and reading the March/April edition of Yankee Magazine, I learned that spring in New England is not marked by the calendar.

According to an advertisement by visitnh.gov:

For New Englanders, the coming of spring isn’t marked by the calendar. It’s marked by plumes of steam from sugar house in full swing. That’s the signal to shed a layer and shake off cabin fever. For generations, making syrup has been more than a tradition – it’s been a rite of passage from winter to spring. Starting with pancake breakfasts and maple donuts, the days are rich with activity. So come take part in the tradition and you’ll have a much tastier way to mark the change of seasons.

Well, warmed by a really good coffee and these warm, encouraging words, I will continue my day rich with activity. It’s time to get more firewood for our wood stove, and to clear the path for the propane and heating oil deliveries. Then over to the local store and buy some cold medicine for my wife. And the dog plus three-year-old son need to be walked through this winter wonder world.

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Why would I write another novel about Caesar?

I set out to write Imperator because I felt I could bring a unique layman’s point of view to the subject of Caesar and the fall of the Roman Republic, free from the traditional dogmatic approach taken by the academic community. In addition I believe the tale of the fall of the Roman Republic is a timely and relevant, cautionary tale for us in 21^st century America.

It is far too simplistic to attribute Caesar’s vast accomplishments to ambition and lust for absolute power alone. While Caesar was referred to commonly as tyrant and was allegedly assassinated for the same reason, Caesar never altered the Republican form of government which he is accused of destroying. Closer examination of the facts presented in the extant sources only make sense when seen in context of an extremely complex personality capable of great compassion for individuals and what was seemingly cold disregard for the lives of millions. In the pages of Imperator a character comes into focus from the extant documents of the period taking into account just how subjective these accounts were. In fact most of the sources for the period, with the notable exception of Caesar’s own writings and those of the orator Cicero, were written many years after the time of Caesar and were written by those opposed to the factions to whom Caesar belonged. The story of Caesar must be viewed within the context of the unique time in which he lived and the unique situation into which he was born.

My interest in Roman Republican history began with the BBC’s production of Graves’ “I Claudius” and McCullough’s “Masters of Rome” series of novels and continued over ten years of avid reading on the subject finally bringing me to Italy in 2005. It was after I visited Italy and the Forum Romanum in particular, that I was inspired to write Imperator.

Any relevant work about Republican Rome must be derived from the city’s long history and complex religious practices. For the story of Imperator the principle research is from extant histories from the subject period of the story, first century BC Rome and shortly there after and is supported by the archaeological and literary records including the vast amount of modern scholarship on the subject.

The principle literary sources from the period for the historical frame work, upon which the Imperator series was constructed, are the works of Appian of Alexandria writing in the Imperial period of the second century AD and Plutarch, a Greek writing in the second half of the first century AD again in the Imperial period. They clearly wrote from a point of view prevalent centuries after the events about which they write. It must be assumed by the reader that Plutarch and Appian relied upon sources, such as the writings of the consul Sulla and Polio an officer in Caesar’s army, which no longer exist, to which they explicitly added their own interpretation of events. Caesar’s “Gallic Wars” and “Civil Wars” and Cicero’s “Letters to Atticus” and “Selected Political Speeches” are the principle extant contemporary accounts of the events of their lifetimes, from which I have drawn upon in creating the characters respectively.

For historical background for early Rome I rely heavily on the Romans Livy and Virgil writing in the time of Augustus in the first century BC. And again we have “Plutarch’s Lives” and the work of another Greek, Polybius’ “The Rise of The Roman Empire” written in the middle of the second century BC.

No book about the Roman Empire could be written without building a strong geographical context around the story. For this I relied mainly upon on Michael Grant’s “A Guide to the Ancient World” and the Encyclopedia Britannica’s World Atlas. In addition I referred to Jacquetta Hawkes’ “Atlas of Ancient Archaeology”. I must also include Google Earth as another indespensable research tool I used to write “Imperator”.

Imperator was very much the product of the massive proliferation of information that is the internet and our digital age. While the vast majority of information included in Imperator came from the pages of real books, globes and atlases I was also able to gather vast amounts of information from disparate sources with great speed and very little wasted time through the use of search engines and online libraries such as, Questia.com, a popular online subscription research site. By these means I had a powerful research tool wherever there was broad band internet available.

Happy Reading!

-Philip Katz

A title like “The Mouse” may be interesting, because short, but doesn’t have a lot of value to it. If you make it “The Mouse That Roared,” you might attract more attention (Note: That particular title is already published; it’s an absolutely lovely novel by Leonard Wibberly and was made into a movie starring Peter Sellers).

On a side note: Book titles can not be copyrighted! You can write a novel and call it “Gone With The Wind,” not a smart marketing move, nevertheless absolutely within the law. The easiest way to verify that your title is unique, go to Amazon.com and search for it.

Naturally, there are several ways of designing the title. Let me refer to my first novel The Bleeding Hills. Of course, this may not be the strongest title ever, and in some readers’ eyes it may even be misleading. No, it is not a Stephen-King-style horror novel, if that is what you were thinking. I did add a sub-title, though, to point a bit more into the right direction, which, in turn, indicates the importance of a sub-title.

In this particular case, namely my first novel, the inspiration to write came from an Irish song, The Boys of Barr Na Sraide, which is based on a poem by Sigerson Clifford. One of the verses starts “And when the hills were bleeding and rifles were aflame…” You get the picture…

With my second (still unfinished) novel I tried to be a bit more provocative. I titled it American Male Prostitute, sub-titled How I Promoted My First Novel With Sex, Lies, And Deceit. Don’t get excited; the content is a product of my vivid imagination. Promoting your first novel is the most difficult marketing task you can imagine, and I was wondering what it would take to attract the ultimate attention. Again, I didn’t follow the marketing activities as explained in the novel. First, I don’t have the looks, and, secondly, my wife would kill me for sure.

There is nothing wrong about being provocative. I call it “aggressive marketing.” Think of Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern, one of the current bestsellers..

One of the guest writers on this blog, Annabelle R. Charbit, is in the process of writing a novel based on her experience with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). For more information on Annabelle Charbit and her work, please visit her website at http://www.ocdridiculouslife.com. Her working title is A Life Lived Ridiculously. A more provocative version could be Diary Of An Obsessive Compulsive Bitch (I haven’t researched whether or not the title is already taken). For the record, that’s not how I think of her, but the title would definitely get some attention.

Okay, in case provocation is not your cup of tea, there are other ways of finding the right title for your work. Pablo Picasso once said, “A good artist copies; an extraordinary artist steals,” meaning we’re now coming to the copy & steal section…

Honestly, I found some very good titles in the bible. Think Power And The Glory by Graham Greene, a line take from the Lord’s Prayer – …for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory… If you are in the business of writing a lawyer’s novel, how about “Those Who Trespass Against Us” ? Sorry, that title has already been used several times…

Another good example comes from Psalm 30:5 – For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for a lifetime; Weeping may endure for the night, But a shout of joy comes in the morning. If you look at Amazon.com you will find, yet again, several titles using Weeping May Endure For The Night.

In the same sense I am reminded of the German writer Johannes Mario Simmel, who wrote works like Nobody Is An Island (Niemand Ist Eine Insel), a line borrowed from Shakespeare – if I’m not mistaken. Other works’ titles are The Answer Is Blowin’ In The Wind (Bob Dylan), And Jimmy Went To The Rainbow’s Foot (Rudyard Kipiling), and more.

In the same sense, another way to look for titles is reading CD labels, i.e. song titles. My personal favorite is Tom Waits, who wrote titles like The Piano Been Drinking – Not Me, Pasties And A G-String (At The Two O’Clock Club), Warm Beer And Cold Women, and my personal favorite Bad Liver And A Broken Heart.

Even if copying and stealing is not your choice, you may have learned that the title of your novel needs to attract attention. Another important feature is, of course, the book cover, but the importance of covers will diminish with the increased use of electronic reading devices such as the Kindle.

I hope I could provide some hints, and, since I am not the ultimate source of wisdom, please leave a comment below. I am sure there are more ways of designing a catchy book title, and I would like to read about it.

The Monty Python Code

For those who happened to stumble upon this article per search engine, this particular post is part of an article series Let’s Write A Novel. My intention is to challenge those authors who write about writing a novel. About 99% of these books are filled with inspirational blubbering. Their strongest feature is a strong, but misleading title. The rest is pure fraud.

That being said, let’s decide the title for our writing project. Well, the decision is already here. We are going with mainstream taste, and we are going with Dan Brown. The title of our work will be The Monty Python Code. Any resemblance to The Da Vinci Code is, of course, purely coincidental.

To follow our little writing project go to Let’s Write A Novel – The Monty Python Code.

The articles on this website reveal the truth regarding Jesus of Nazareth. Archaeologists, historians, textual scientists and New Testament scholars examine the wealth of evidence making him the most unique person in the history of our world. You will find answers to questions asked by skeptics about his existence, the credibility of his claims, his true identity, his fulfillment of prophecy, his resurrection, his relevance to our lives today, and the reliability of the New Testament gospels.

So what do the facts tell us? Can we trust the New Testament accounts of Jesus, or are the skeptics right? We invite you to examine the evidence.

Read The Evidence:

The following articles are from Y-Jesus magazine.

• Was Jesus a Real Person?
• Was there a Da Vinci Conspiracy?
• Is Jesus God?
• Are the Gospels True?
• Was Jesus the Messiah?
• Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?
• Is Jesus Relevant Today?

Y-Jesus Magazine

Y-Jesus is a single-issue magazine that deals with the evidence regarding the most controversial person who ever lived. This 100 page, full-color, 8.5X11 magazine, illustrated with dramatic photos and contemporary graphics, will help both youth and adults understand the evidence regarding Jesus Christ and his radical claims.

Read more…