Peter Squared, Ken Goldberg, MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 2000
Change of Heart, Jack Allen, Burping Frog Publishing, 2001
Barry and ‘the boys’: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History, Daniel Hopsicker, Mad Cow Press, 2001
Banshee Rising, Walter Ihlefield, Xlibris Corporation, 2001
Never Fade Away, William Hart, Fithian Press, 2002
World Hunger: Twelve Myths, Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins, Peter Rosset, Grove Press, 1998
Literary L.A., Lionel Rolfe, California Classics Books, 2002
Human, Brian F. McNamee, VistaTron Publishing, 2000
Tentacles of God, Archie, Voice of India Press, 2001
Peter Branstill is in his early 40s and works as an accountant. He has several suits, all of the same color and style, that he alternates wearing to work. At work, he is the sort of person who does only the work expected of him, doesn’t socialize with his co-workers, and eats his lunch (the same thing every day) on the same park bench, being sure to sit on a different part of the bench each day. If, for instance, there is a spot of dirt on the bench, Peter uses his own Graduated Dirt Rating Scale (GDRS), which considers things like the size, color, location and texture of the spot. Peter then decides if it is minor dirt, to be ignored, or major contamination, to be avoided at all costs. Peter lives in his own world of mathematical precision, strange rituals and a dread of contamination.
One day, at the park bench, Peter meets John, a lifelong mental patient who is in a local day program. John is a chain smoker who claims to be able to smoke using only one lung at a time. At first, Peter does his best to ignore John, who doesn’t seem to know when to stop talking. As time goes on, Peter makes his daily visits from John part of his precise, ordered world.
John tells the story of being on a bus to Nebraska. On the bus, he meets a woman named Anna, who is willing to have sex with him on the bus. Anna is also on psychiatric medication and stuck in a loveless Hasidic Jewish marriage. Each summer, she intentionally goes off her medication and impulsively gets on a bus, not knowing, or caring, where it is going. Her husband has to go pick her up, wherever she is, and bring her back home, where she gets back on her medication, and returns to “normal” in time for Yom Kippur.
While living in Nebraska, John gets into the local day program and starts to fit in. As a consumer of pornography (so is Peter), John searches for the local “source.” He finds one video store, where everything is kept behind the front desk and must be requested by name. Despite this, the town considers forming a commission to stamp out pornography. John starts making pro-pornography noises and gets thrown out of town.
Written by a clinical psychologist, this is a fascinating, and quite eye-opening, look at mental illness from the “inside”. It also says a lot about the “helping professions.” It is very much worth reading.
Change of Heart, Jack Allen, Burping Frog Publishing, 2001
Joshua McGowan works for US Naval Intelligence. He is pulled out of an assignment and sent to eastern Russia to escort Valeria Konstantinova, a former KGB spy, to America. She is busted out of a Russian prison by the CIA; it’s part of the price demanded by Colonel Mironov, a former KGB officer and head of a secret faction of the Communist Party. Mironov is ready to give the location of Dr. Otto Jones, an American scientist who defected several years previously with the formula for an undetectable plastic explosive. Of course, Mironov has his own plans for Valeria. Valeria also has her own plans. In northern Japan, she eludes Josh and calls her lover, the brother of one of the most powerful Russian mafia families, leaving Josh in the hands of the Japanese police. Josh takes a side trip to western Iraq, to help the Mossad destroy a shipment of the plastic explosives sold to an Iraqi terrorist group. Back in Moscow, Valeria’s lover gives the location of Dr. Jones. Josh plans on returning the doctor to America for trial, but Valeria kills him to keep him from hindering her own plans. Mironov is ready to force the return of the Communist Party by taking Valeria, who Mironov has used as a high-class prostitute, to the floor of the Russian Parliament. Showing Russian democracy as weak, he will then demand a vote on restoring the Communists to power. Josh is the only one in the way. This is a real gem of a story. It’s very well done, it keeps the reader involved from the beginning, it’s very plausible and the characters are real people. I am looking forward to any sequels that might come in the future.Top of Page
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Barry and ‘the boys’: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History, Daniel Hopsicker, Mad Cow Press, 2001 This book is all about a scandal feared by the White House more than Whitewater, a scandal not touched by the American news media. It’s a totally different look at the last half century of American history, and it revolves around a place called Mena, Arkansas and a man named Barry Seal. Seal grew up in Louisiana and was addicted to airplanes from an early age. While still a teenager, he could pilot nearly anything with wings. Joining the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol, he met a man named David Ferrie (later to be well known in JFK assassination circles) who introduced him to the clandestine world. Soon, Seal would disappear for days or weeks at a time, and come back with, for a teenager in the 1950s, insanely large amounts of money. Becoming a life-long CIA operative, Seal started his career running guns to both sides in the Cuban Revolution, to Fidel Castro and Fulgencio Batista. Over the next 40 years, Seal was at the center of all the major events in US history, from the JFK assassination (the book blows more holes, as if more were needed, in the Warren Commission’s Lone Gunman theory), to Vietnam drug-running, to Watergate, to Iran-Contra. The entire period is characterized by very deep ties between US intelligence and the Mafia, even going back to Cuba before Castro. The author isn’t talking about vague ties with minor-league mobsters, he is talking about people like Johnny Roselli and Carlos Marcello, the absolute top of the Mob “pyramid.” Mena, Arkansas was a small town with an equally small airport. It was also a major entry point for a flood of airplane-carried cocaine into the United States (by the ton). Going on for years and years, one must ask if the major players in Arkansas politics, like Jackson Stephens and Bill Clinton, were somehow in cahoots with the CIA and the Mob. The author also explores plenty of ties between Seal and the Bush family. This book surpasses the level of Wow. It has enough revelations for ten books. It is extremely highly recommended, especially for anyone interested in recent American history.
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Banshee Rising, Walter Ihlefield, Xlibris Corporation, 2001 Mitchell Parks is a police officer in present-day small-town Virginia. He is also a former Navy SEAL, Codename Banshee. He learned the ways of the warrior from his grandfather, a Lakota warrior, who raised him. He is also troubled by bad dreams of a SEAL mission in Vietnam that went very wrong. One day, Mitchell finds the ghost of a teenage girl in his attic. Sara McCafferty lived in town thirty years ago, until her father, Ian McCafferty, abruptly packed up the family and left town, never to be heard from again. Ian was a very jealous sort who seemed to spend much of his time being a mean drunk. Mitchell resolves to find her killer. As Mitchell, Dana, his lover and fellow cop, and Owen Taggart, former SEAL dive buddy, begin to ask around town about the McCafferty’s and start rattling cages, someone or something pushes back, hard, almost killing Mitch twice. Some in town are not happy about old town happenings being resurrected. The town is in something of a spiritual time warp, seemingly stuck in the early 1960s; the preferred mode of transportation around town is the Studebaker. The finger of suspicion points toward Clyde Meller, the police chief, and a drug deal thirty years ago that went bad. This one is surprisingly good. The author gives the feeling of (for want of a better term) knowing his way around; not just mystery writing, but also familiarity with police procedures, and what it is like to be a Navy SEAL. The story is interesting, plausible and well done from start to finish. I hope this is not the last of Mitchell Parks.
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Never Fade Away, William Hart, Fithian Press, 2002 John Goddard is a remedial English teacher in the California State University system, and a soon-to-be published fiction writer. He is also a Vietnam veteran still troubled by bad dreams of his time in the war. University policy is that two failed remedial English courses equals automatic expulsion from the university. The system, designed by Mary Hart Parcell, Dean of Arts and Sciences, whom Goddard loathes, seems intended for just that purpose. The assignments and exams are totally wrong for people who are usually immigrants from another country, and whose English may be lacking. Goddard is that rarity, a teacher who sincerely cares about his students, but without tenure, there is only so much that he can accomplish. Tina Le is a student in Goddard’s class. One of the post-war Vietnamese boat people, she is living with a woman named Rayneece, the sort of person who goes through boyfriends the way most people go through tissues. Tina writes a short story for an assignment about life back home in Vietnam. For Goddard, trudging through a sea of pretty bad writing by the rest of the class, Tina’s story is a breath of fresh air. He fudges the grade on her final exam so that she can pass the course; the story is just too good to ignore. He gets disciplined by Dean Parcell, and after refusing to change Tina’s final grade, is told not to come back next semester. He files an ultimately unsuccessful grievance against the school. Meantime, the relationship between Goddard and Le blooms into something more than the usual student-teacher relationship. This is a gem of a first novel. Told in alternating diary excerpts, Hart easily switches back and forth from American English to “immigrant English.” The author, an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher in real life, has many things to say about the academic world, none of them very complimentary. This one is well worth reading.
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World Hunger: Twelve Myths, Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins, Peter Rosset, Grove Press, 1998 Over the years, many myths have emerged about the subject of world hunger. People think that if this or that should happen, hunger will disappear, and no longer will westerners have to look at pictures of starving babies in Africa. This book explodes many of those myths. Some people think that population (or overpopulation) is the problem. Others think that there simply isn’t enough food available, or that nature, with her floods and droughts, is the culprit. Still others think that the solution lies with free trade, or letting the market provide, or with the Green Revolution, with its heavy emphasis on pesticides and other chemicals. Other possibilities are that the poor are simply too hungry to revolt, or that the US should increase its stingy foreign aid budget. The authors place the blame elsewhere. All over the world, there has been a huge concentration of land in fewer and fewer hands, forcing poor and middle-class peasants off the land (in the US, witness the decline of the family farmer). Structural adjustment programs from places like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (part of the requirements when asking for a loan) require a country to reorient its agriculture toward items that are easily exportable rather than items that can feed their people. Another requirement is the removal internal tariffs and other barriers to the import of grain and other foodstuffs. It results in a flood of cheaper (usually American) agricultural products reaching the market, driving local farmers out of business. The countries that one thinks of when hearing “famine” actually produce enough food to feed their people. The only problem is that much of it has to go overseas to help pay the foreign debt. This book is excellent. It presents a potentially complex subject in a clear, easy to understand manner. It contains a list of addresses to contact for more information, and is a great activism reference.
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Literary L.A., Lionel Rolfe, California Classics Books, 2002 Based on a series of newspaper pieces written in the late 1970s, this book profiles some of the people who made Los Angeles’ bohemian culture in the 20th century. Many people think that San Francisco, with the Beat Generation, was the “center” of bohemian living, but the City of Angels had quite a thriving culture of its own. It all grew out of the coffeehouse scene, where a constantly changing group of poets, literary gypsies, writers in exile (real or self-imposed) and others, would get together and weave pieces of the literary tapestry of Los Angeles. Rolfe profiles the famous, and not so famous, including Theodore Dreiser, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley and the Mann brothers (Thomas and Heinrich). There is also a piece on Upton Sinclair’s 1934 campaign for Governor of California. Running on the Socialist Party ticket, he received 45 percent of the vote despite a major smear campaign against him. As part of a musical family (the virtuoso violinist Yehudi Menuhin was an uncle), Rolfe grew up in a household that offered a place to go for musicians and other artists-in-exile. This book was not written as some piece of dry literary history, it was written by someone who was there and lived through that era, and has spent much of his life writing about it. As a lifelong voracious reader, I very much appreciated Rolfe’s putting a person and life to the names I have seen on book covers my whole life. Anyone with an interest in 20th century American literature will enjoy this book. I think I’ll visit my local library and see how many of these authors are in the stacks. Meantime, this book is highly recommended.
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Human, Brian F. McNamee, VistaTron Publishing, 2000 For most people, the medical diagnosis of total internal organ failure, one at a time, would be a death sentence. Not for Dr. Sean Colin, head of Geneserch, a biotech firm based near Cleveland. While Colin is dying, his employees come up with a way to mix his DNA with that of a chimpanzee to create a half-human, half-animal walking organ repository for harvest. It’s name is Mookie. The people at Geneserch think they are safe from the prying eyes of the public, until, tipped off by a disgruntled employee, the authorities put Mookie in protective custody and put Colin on trial for cruelty to animals and felonious assault. The animal rights people have a field day. The defense attorney, L.J. McClafferty and the prosecutor, Javer Houston, have met many times before in the courtroom. Houston’s loathing for McClafferty is such that a mere conviction for Colin isn’t enough; Houston wants to flatten McClafferty like a steamroller. Much trial time is spent trying to determine What is human? Where is the dividing line between animal and human? The trial does not go well for Colin; every witness, even the “friendly” ones, seem to hammer another nail in his coffin. By the time of the verdict, the only question for Colin is the length of his prison sentence. This book is just weird enough for X-Files fans. Those who enjoy courtroom novels will especially enjoy this one. The author, a doctor and lawyer, has done a fine job throughout. Maybe the story gets a little too technical at times, but it is still a first-rate piece of writing.
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Tentacles of God, Archie, Voice of India Press, 2001 Set in present-day India, this novel is about a young man named Dinakar, who enters the local government medical college. He does pretty well in his classes; not top of his class, but he doesn’t have to worry about failure. Many other students are not so confident, so at exam time, they look for any possible advantage. The male students offer the teachers monetary bribes; female students offer sex, which the teachers are more than willing to accept. Later in his training, Dinakar meets one head doctor who refuses to operate on a patient with a severe intestinal problem unless the family pays him a sufficiently large amount of money. They were unable to raise it, so the doctor gave the patient a lesser degree of care, an the patient died. Dinakar’s best friend, Mahesh, who was pushed into a religious career by Ramappiah, financial manager of the local Hindu temple, or mutt, and local rich person, has problems of his own. Mahesh’s predecessor as swami told the story of how he was unable to keep his vow of lifetime celibacy. This wasn’t a one-time thing; over a period of time, Ramappiah supplied the temple with hundreds of willing women under cover of darkness. The swami fathered three children. Ramappiah had the swami, and the temple, totally under his control. Now, Ramappiah is doing the same thing to Mahesh, pushing him hard to forget about his vow of lifetime celibacy. Dinakar and Elisa, his longtime girlfriend, want to get married. There is a problem: Dinakar is a devout Hindu, and Elisa is a devout Catholic. Such interreligious marriages are strongly frowned upon in India. Mahesh finds a way to bend the rules and performs the ceremony. Even though Elisa converts to Hinduism, and takes a Hindu name, Dinakar’s family is barely civil to both of them. This leads Dinakar to think that maybe he should have converted to Christianity, which allows for religious conversions, unlike Hinduism. For Westerners, this is a pretty “quiet” book with no violence (except for a couple of suicides at the medical college) and only some implied sex. The author, a medical doctor in India, has a lot of things to say about his homeland, none of them very complimentary. Keep in mind that this tale of medical school, which could be set anywhere in the world, comes from a very different part of the world, and it is very good and very much worth reading.
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