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The Myth America Pageant
2007-12-02 15:41:00
The Myth America Pageant by Robert V. Wickes Ordinary Joes don?t need another dreary book on government or, far worse, more biased partisan ranting. So in The Myth America Pageant, Rob explores a brand new perspective on politics and takes an often-amusing look at often-confusing issues. The result is a friendly conversation with the readers, easy to read and simple to comprehend. Here?s his recipe: Take the lessons of history Blend in ample common sense Sprinkle liberally with controversial speculation Turn up the heat until you?ve cooked the goose of all manner of ambitious politicians. The result is a thought-provoking, passion-evoking analysis of today?s problems along with some radical, but rational ideas for tomorrow. Serves: Everyone (politicians not included). Comprehensive and comprehensible, The Myth America Pageant is a great read for Ordinary Joes of any political party. Voters need to know the real answers to the critical political and social issues of today, but they?l...
More About: Politics , General

Kindle is Kool!
2007-12-01 00:03:00
Amazon Kindle is a revolutionary portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, newspapers, magazines and blogs to a crisp, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper, even in bright sunlight. Kindle customers, no matter where they are in the U.S., can wirelessly shop the Kindle Store and download new content ? all without a PC or a WiFi hot spot. Amazon pays for Kindle?s wireless connectivity so there are no monthly wireless bills and no service commitments for customers. The Kindle Store contains over 90,000 books that can be purchased and delivered wirelessly to Kindle, each in less than a minute. Customers can choose from hundreds of top newspapers, magazines and blogs and have their subscriptions auto-delivered wirelessly. All New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases are $9.99, unless marked otherwise. Sign me up! Order your Kindle today. amazon kindle, kindle, wifiBookmark to: ---Related Articles at Book Reviews, Author Intervi...
More About: Announcement , Kool

Improving Your Emotional Intelligence (EI)
2007-11-30 21:03:00
About a decade ago, Emotional Intelligence , (EI), was recognized to be a far better indicator of success in the work world than IQ. However, the key question that remained was, how do you raise you EI?Dr. Reldan S. Nadler’s book, Leaders’ Playbook answers that question. The Leaders’ Playbook is a how-to guide with more than 100 EI techniques and tools to help raise EI. Nadler, an executive coach and speaker also reveals the secrets of success in fascinating thumbnail EI stories of corporate star performers, political leaders and sports coaches. Examples include: Rudy Giuliani.s perfect pitch of empathy and vision after 911 G.E.s Jeff Immelt.s managing adversity eBays Meg Whitman’s initiative and service orientation USC’s Pete Carroll’s optimism and developing star players and championship teams Leaders’ Playbook gives readers the keys for significantly enhancing performance. with answers to critical questions: How do I increase my confi...
More About: General , Non-Fiction , Emotional Intelligence

Looking for a Unique Christmas Gift? How About Life Among the Vikings?
2007-11-29 19:27:00
Whether you had Viking ancestors or are simply fascinated by the culture that almost ruled the world, Lost Worlds, The Vikings is a visually stunning new publication from Sterling–just out in time for the holidays. Amazing interactive features (push the button to hear Viking-speak) and a library of information will take you back to the days when the Norsemen ruled the seas. For those 200 years, all of the Europe feared attacks from the renowned warriors in the north. This lavishly illustrated and interactive book explains why the Vikings inspired such fear. Lost Worlds, The Vikings illuminates every aspect of Viking history and culture, including their lore and legends, journeys of exploration, discovery of America centuries before Columbus. The many features I found intriguing included the sound chips (including someone speaking against a backdrop of thunderstorms!), the cut-through illustration of a longship, the gatefolds featuring a Viking map, and five embossed Runestone ...
More About: Christmas , Life , Gift , Unique

The Myriad Possibilities of Conceptual Writing: A Quiet but Major Success
2007-11-25 12:39:00
Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer Garth Risk Harvey, with some major help from his many photographer friends and designers Christopher D. Salyers and Eliane Lazzaris, has created a unique book in A Field Guide to the North American Family. This completely fascinating ‘novel’ is a compendium of brief one-page thoughts titled alphabetically and matched with a photograph that illuminates the words written. And as if this weren’t clever enough, the entire book is a marvel of design, taking the form of a notebook one would take on a journey, a collection of musings, paraphernalia, variations in paper types and typefaces, and printed in such a way that the reader feels almost guilty about opening the cover of someone’s private diary, so intimate is the structure and the content. This is an art book - but it is so very much more. Hallberg subtitles his book ‘Concerning chiefly the Hungates and Harrisons, with accounts of their habits, nesting, dispersion...
More About: Writing , Book Reviews , Success , Major , Myriad

Looking for a Unique Christmas Gift? How About Life Among the Vikings?
2007-11-22 19:27:00
Whether you had Viking ancestors or are simply fascinated by the culture that almost ruled the world, Lost Worlds, The Vikings is a visually stunning new publication from Sterling–just out in time for the holidays. Amazing interactive features (push the button to hear Viking-speak) and a library of information will take you back to the days when the Norsemen ruled the seas. For those 200 years, all of the Europe feared attacks from the renowned warriors in the north. This lavishly illustrated and interactive book explains why the Vikings inspired such fear. Lost Worlds, The Vikings illuminates every aspect of Viking history and culture, including their lore and legends, journeys of exploration, discovery of America centuries before Columbus. The many features I found intriguing included the sound chips (including someone speaking against a backdrop of thunderstorms!), the cut-through illustration of a longship, the gatefolds featuring a Viking map, and five embossed Runestone ...
More About: Christmas , Life , Gift , Unique

Epistemology and How to Encourage It
2007-11-21 13:35:00
Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer With very little of the world’s headlines making sense to those millions who read or watch them, this novel or story form, A Secret of the Universe: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Discovery of an Eternal Truth, of addressing the glue that holds people’s perceptions together is a healthy start toward healing. Author Stephen L. Gibson (’ Truth-Driven Thinking: An Examination of Human Emotion and Its Impact on Everyday Life’) is a young campaigner for epistemology - the science of studying the origins of human belief and knowledge as examined through basing all thought on truth. Instead of electing to create what could have been a dry discourse on science and religion and how the two intertwine, Gibson has demonstrated his own personal journey through a story involving the friendship of two boys/men, one (Bill) is a devoted literalistic, evangelical Christian while the other (Ian) seeks to explain the holes in the blind ...
More About: Book Reviews , Epistemology , Stem

The Painted Boy: Resurrection from the Deathbed of Stephen Crane
2007-11-15 13:29:00
Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer Edmund White, gratefully, is a prolific writer, a gifted man of letters who has become one of America’s more important authors. While much of Edmund White’s oeuvre is about gay life, he does not confine his talent to the one topic: he is a brilliant biographer, a fine man of research, and a poet with prose. Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel is his latest foray into fictional biography and for this reader the book succeeds on every level. The short novel is ostensibly a ‘biographical’ account of the sadly brief life of novelist Stephen Cran e, a nineteenth century literary giant who is best known for The Red Badge of Courage, but who also wrote a few other short novels and story collections. Basing the concept of this novel on both fact and fantasy, Edmund White gives us the last days of Stephen Crane’s life, a tortured existence as he succumbed to tuberculosis, nursed by his beloved mistress Cora, an ex-Madame who h...
More About: Book Reviews , Resurrection , Rect

Layer Cake
2007-11-14 00:23:00
Grady Harp is the Amazon #7 Reviewer Ann Patchett is one of our finer story tellers writing today and certainly her latest novel Run keeps pace (if not exceeds) with her previous works. Patchett has the uncanny ability to introduce ‘facsimiles’ of characters in very subtle ways, blending her ingredient characters slowly, revealing their full personalities and places in the storyline so gradually that reading about them resembles meeting new acquaintances at a party - some will fade, others will materialize as leads. In RUN, Patchett addresses mixed race adoption, responses to death, biologic versus adoptive mothers, and family dynamics, all in the course of a twenty-four hour period of time, and in doing so she compresses so much information that reading this fine novel begs for a one sitting time frame to read it from cover to cover. Former Boston Mayor Bernard Doyle and his Irish wife Bernadette had one child - Sullivan - a lad who failed to fulfill his father’s ...
More About: Cake , Layer

The Perfect New Book In Anticipation of Christmas
2007-11-12 13:19:00
Grady Harp is Amazon’s #7 Reviewer Chet Spiewak has created a beautifully illustrated, well written book that fits perfectly into the season before Christmas , that time of year when parents search for stories that address the meaning of Christmas, the anticipation of the season, and the joy that culminates on Christmas morning. His book is An Ornaments’ Tale Yes, there are other tales such as ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ and ‘Why the Chimes Rang’ and some others that fill that need to build on the holiday without focusing on just gifts. Spiewak’s fine little book sets the stage both for the excitement ahead and suggests traditions that children/families can build upon to make the holiday truly a meaningful event. The main characters are traditional Christmas ornaments stashed in the attic until the holiday comes. Each of the ornaments (beautifully rendered through the magic of computer generated graphics) begins to prepare for Christmas...
More About: Book , Perfect

Jackie Kessler?s Newest Novel Just Released: The Road to Hell
2007-11-06 11:50:00
Hell hath no fury like a succubus scorned Jesse may no longer be a succubus, but she?s got a Hell of a past. She wants to come clean about her infernal history with Paul Hamilton, her white-knight-in-training lover, except he?d never believe her. Just like some people are worth being (shudder) monogamous for, some secrets are worth keeping. So Jesse keeps mum?until three of her former associates strong-arm her into returning to the Pit. Now, unless Jesse faces off against the King of Hell, she?ll lose Paul?s immortal soul. If she?d known love was this tough, she never would have turned her back on Lust… Don’t miss Jackie ’s appearances: Saturday, November 10 3 pm. Flights of Fantasy 488 Albany-Shaker Road Loudonville, NY 12211 (518) 435-9337 or 1-800-300-READ Friday, November 16 ? Sunday, November 18 Fantasy Matters University of Minnesota Here’s what critics are saying about Jackie Kessler’s newest novel, The Road to Hell. “Fun, sexy and utterly o...
More About: Released , Hell

Dancing With Gods, a New Collection of Short Stories
2007-10-29 19:26:00
Looking for passion,conceit,bravery,mystery? Look no further than Linda Firestone’s unique collection of stories, Dancing with Gods : A Collection of Women’s Short Stories . These tales guide the reader through worlds populated by extraordinary female characters. Their visions, journeys and travails are guaranteed to delight and entertain readers. They will leave you wanting more. Excerpts The Light Bearer How long she would last was of no consequence; she was not afraid. Her life had been rewarding. A sense of calm swept over her. Now at the end, she knew her path had been perfect. Long ago, unable to find any comfort she had craved death. But that was long ago. Long before she came to know what it meant to be a light-bearer. In these last fading hours of being, she basked comfortably in the warmth of the sun and her garden; she was grateful. Streetwalkers She untangled the scarf from her head and threw it to the floor. Her body was tired and achy and her head felt heavy....
More About: Short Stories

A Corpsman?s Response to The Vietnam War: Sequelae
2007-10-19 02:15:00
Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer E. Everett McFall offers his own tragedies and illness and gradual recovery from the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the result of giving medical aid to the living and the dead during his tour of duty in Vietnam , 1966/1967. Responding to a therapist’s advice to commit the unspeakable experiences to a written journal was the impetus to launch his slow and terrifying road to recovery, a journey that in his own words persists to this day. The results of that initial journal are here in this collection of thoughts, reflections and poems he has appropriately titled I Can Still Hear Their Cries, Even In My Sleep: A Journey Into PTSD. It is a book that would be well for all of us to read and experience as, despite the horrendous accounts of war’s disabling effects on the human mind, it is also one of the books that will be considered a retrospective first in the exploration of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - a ‘new’ disease ...
More About: Poetry , Memoir , Vietnam War , Response

Revisit Your Sophomore Year in High School With This Hilarious New Young Ad
2007-10-15 19:15:00
Move over all you comedic writers, because a new force has entered the genre. Amber Kizer, a Washington state author, has blasted into the realms of excellence with her hilarious first novel, Gert Garibaldi’s Rants and Raves: One Butt Cheek at a Time. Kizer’s book follows Gert Garibaldi (a hated name, given to her by her ancient parents) through a portion of her sophomore year in high school. Her experiences run the gamut (as do ALL sophomore girls) from the bliss of first love to the horror of getting your period at the same instant you have to stand in front of the class and give a presentation. I found Gert’s interaction with her (slightly daft) parents dead-on; after all what do these oldsters know about the angst of teen life? Later, a visit to Victoria’s Secret changes part of that concept! I also loved the dynamics (and honesty) of Gert’s friendship with Adam, her gay best friend. Pals since forever, Gert and Adam share their fears and hopes a...
More About: Hilarious , School , High School , Young , High

The Virginian Who Might Have Saved Lincoln
2007-10-14 18:49:00
Historical fiction author Bob O’Connor explores the story of a man who might have saved a nation from post-Civil War division, in his novel, The Virginian Who Might Have Saved Lincoln . President Lincoln?s trusted friend, former law partner and heavily armed bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, is the subject of this new historical novel. Lamon snuck Lincoln into Washington prior to the Inauguration when detective Allan Pinkerton uncovered a plot to assassinate Lincoln when his train passed through Baltimore. Lamon was in charge of the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863. Many nights he slept on the floor outside the Lincoln bedroom in the White House to protect the president. Unfortunately, Lamon was not at Ford?s Theater on April 14, 1865, the night the president was shot by John Wilkes Booth. If Lamon had been present, would Lincoln have been saved? About the Author Bob O’Connor lives in Charles Town, West Virginia, close to most of the sites ...
More About: History , Announcement

Truth, Meaning, and Beauty, a Review of 2.Am: THE ASIAN MALE
2007-10-14 02:09:00
Grady Harp is Amazon #8 Top Review er Norm Yip continues to substantiate his growing reputation as a fine art photographer with the publication of 2.Am: The Asian Male. The suggestions of superior craftsmanship and sensitivity as a portrait artist were evident in his first publication THE ASIAN MALE: 1.AM and with that book now in wide circulation his reputation has grown as has the respect from not only an appreciative audience, but also from art critics and peers alike. The images within this book are both black and white and color, and for the aficionados Yip carefully explains the technical aspects of his craft. What is unique about this collection is that it celebrates Asian men and in doing so further substantiates Yip as the leader in this niche of photography. Historically the Asian models, both female and male, have been modest in facing the camera unclothed: skin without the benefit of costume or secretive modes of stance has been somewhat of a taboo. It is to Yip’s c...
More About: Truth , Beauty , Meaning

A Sad Farewell to Madeleine L?Engle, Author of A Wrinkle in Time
2007-10-12 04:41:00
It was with great sadness that I read about the September 6, passing of Madeleine L’Engle, award-winning author of the Newberry Award winner A Wrinkle in Time . L’Engle, who was 88 years old, authored over 60 books. L’Engle made an impact on me years ago, when I first picked up A Wrinkle in Time, and from there I traveled with her to her other Time Trilogy novels, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Something about her books touched me in a way few books do; although fiction, there was a sense of absolute truth and an open heartedness I’ve rarely experienced in other authors. Do you know that the only letter I’ve ever written to an author was to her? And she answered, a hand-written note on stationery stamped from her summer home, Crosswicks, in Connecticut. I still treasure her note. Although L’Engle’s “adult” works are Christian in nature, she was often criticized by not being Christian enough; some camps thought h...
More About: Author , Farewell , Fare

Outrageous! Review of Love Without
2007-10-11 17:09:00
Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Review er Review of Love Without: Stories. Jerry Stahl is a unique writer, one that will shock your socks off, make you feel as though you should put brown paper over the cover of the book so that no one will know you’re reading it, and definitely reserve participating in his stories in secret private places. BUT, the man can write short stories more original in content and craftsmanship than most anyone around. This collection of eleven stories covers a large span of his career and when grouped together in the manner in which his publisher has placed them, they shock, entertain, tickle, horrify, and in general provide come of the strangest exploration of human borderline behavior ever written! Meet Miss Chatty Cheeks, a woman of advanced years who abuses cocaine through an ‘original’ portal; Doris (an older woman) and early teen virgin Bob and the physical encounter they share in their assigned seats while flying across America; Puray...
More About: Book Reviews , Outrageous

A Very Important New Novel about the Eccentricities of our Society
2007-10-10 17:03:00
Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer Borderline is a book that works on so many levels that it is almost unclassifiable. It is a genuinely warm, tender, humorous coming of age story while at the same time being a novel that is smart, informative and illuminating in the fields of genetics, autism as an increasingly proliferating condition, fast food and obesity as national crises, and the overemphasis of pill-popping for invented childhood and adult disorders. Sounds like too much information to compress into one book? Not in the deft hands of author Bonnie Rozanski! For all of the intelligent and interesting information the book contains, the story itself is an amazingly fresh novel, written with great style and sensitivity, a novel than will appeal to just about everyone no matter the age group. Guy Ritter is a twelve-year-old son of a geneticist father, an activist mother, and Guy happens to have a five-year-old brother Austin who is an autistic child. Guy feels extraneous in ...
More About: Society

New Books Help Parents and Kids Prepare for Kindergarten and First Grade
2007-10-06 19:28:00
Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten! and Let’s Get Ready for First Grade! are winners of the Adding Wisdom Award, State Approved teaching tool that are taking the nation by storm, helping parents and kids prepare for kindergarten and first grade Teachers at home and school love it! It?s not a storybook or a workbook; ...
More About: Kids , Books , Parents , Parent , Pare

Award-Winning Author Announces Release of New Novel, Stewards of the Flame
2007-10-05 06:19:00
Sylvia Engdahl, award-winning author of Young Adult science fiction, is pleased to announce the publication of her first adult novel, Stewards of the Flame (September 2007) ?A taut, well-paced science fiction work . . . that transcends the genre’s traditional subdivisions and leads us into a world as relevant as today but as enthralling as tomorrow.? ...
More About: Sci-Fi , Author , Release , Award , Winning

Quirky and Hilarious Young Adult Novel Released by Random House
2007-10-04 14:00:00
The series at a glance Gert Garibaldi is a normal 15-year-old American girl. She is not gorgeous, she is not loaded and she is not dating the hottest guy in school. She is honest, frank, funny, and real. The books cover a semester of time during her high school experience. The first book in the series covers ...
More About: House , Hilarious , Random , Young , Released

Teleclass for Authors: Article Magnetism . . . Writing Articles That Attrac
2007-09-30 21:08:00
Cara Lumen, nicknamed the Vision Distiller, will present three teleclasses beginning October 9, on writing articles that attract attention. As an author myself, I know how important it is to provide excellent and free content for your website visitors, and Cara’s class focuses on teaching writers of all genres how to use articles to increase website ...
More About: Writing , Articles , Article , Authors , Artic

Bestselling Authors Set to Aid Writers at La Jolla Writers Conference, Nov
2007-09-27 17:44:00
by Robin Duncan Remember the scene in the movie, Pay it Forward when the stranger tosses the keys to his brand-new Jaguar to a man stranded without a car? For aspiring writers, the La Jolla Writers Conference is a different set of keys. Instead this conference offers bestselling authors Lisa Jackson, David Morrell, and Stephen J. ...
More About: Announcement , Authors

Book Review: Patricia Cornwell?s Book of the Dead a Knockout Winner
2007-09-26 16:30:00
Harriet Klausner is Amazon’s #1 Review er Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her long time lover Benton Wesley are called to Rome to work with a team investigating the death of sixteen-year-old tennis star Drew Martin. Her body was left in a prominent location so that her mutilated corpse would be found quickly; huge chunks were cut out of ...
More About: Fiction , Book Review , Book Reviews , Book

Young Girl?s Spiritual Coming of Age Story is Well-Crafted Novel
2007-09-26 08:23:00
Harriet Klausner is Amazon’s #1 Reviewer When Julia Bakker was nine years old, her mom left her and her dad; no big deal as she had deserted them mentally long before she finally packed her bags. When she was fifteen, her father died after a long illness slowly debilitated him. Julia is left with her grandmother on ...
More About: Story , Spiritual , Girl , Young , Tory

Where Authors Come to Talk . . . New Book on Talk Radio for Authors
2007-09-25 21:41:00
Reviewed by Betty Jo Tucker Francine Silverman, who operates an online publicity service for authors and hosted Book Marketing with Fran on Achieve Internet Radio , deserves kudos for her latest book, Talk Radio for Authors : Getting Interviews Across the U.S. and Canada . In this extensive guidebook for writers interested in discussing their work on the airwaves, ...

Lynn Hoffman Adds Another Feather to his Toque
2007-09-25 16:34:00
Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer Lynn Hoffman , a highly regarded food and drink writer from Philadelphia, tops his 1997 fiction debut of ‘The Bachelor’s Cat’ with a fully mature novel bang BANG: A Novel, a book so well conceived and stylishly written that it places Hoffman in the realm of top American writers. And ...
More About: Book Reviews , Feather , Feat

North Korean Killing Machine Featured in New Thriller
2007-09-24 16:18:00
Harriet Klausner is Amazon #1 Reviewer Staunch Stalinist Peter Nampo lives in North Korea; he wants to make it a power to be reckoned with and a moneymaker for its satellite weapon system that he is developing. Once in geo-orbit, it can knock out other countries satellites and spread radiation on its enemies; he plans to ...
More About: Machine , Book Reviews , Thriller , Korean

A Confessional Expose of Con Artists Embedded in a Fine Social History of A
2007-09-23 15:16:00
Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer Dave Gray (AKA Alabama Fats) takes the confessional platform in this excellent book Telling It All - My Life As A Con Man , a reflection of a life of crime as shared by an 80-year-old African American to writer Steven Levi, and what makes this book even ...
More About: Social , History , Non-Fiction , Book Reviews , Artists