There is no telling the chaos that would result from an announcement that someone discovered a formula that would enable us to replace fossil fuels. Every nation would want to get their hands on it – there would be no end to the lengths they would go to in order to get control of the secret that would make them the most powerful nation on earth!
No Urn for the Ashes (Bayfire Press Publishing) is an outstanding novel by Alison Sawyer Current. It is the perfect blend of adventure, thrills, compassion and grief, and the author’s choice of her dynamic characters reflects an incredible insight into human nature.
Tennyson Garland is the genius behind the discovery of this formula and he knew he must keep it a secret. After this brilliant scientist and his young daughter tragically die in a fire at their isolated mountain cabin, his widow realizes there are evil forces at work that will stop at nothing to control the world with this discovery. Eight years pass and Taylor is in the midst of a failing marriage, still suffering the loss of her first husband and child, and finds herself having to deal with the past once again. She gets caught up in the treachery of Kevin Levine, the former colleague of her first husband who was always left behind in the wake of Tennyson’s brilliance. The drama that follows leads her to believe that her daughter may actually be alive!
In this suspense-filled, page-turning story readers get transported to Nicaragua and on to Mexico when a new struggle arises – with the prize being the greatest discovery of modern times. We follow Taylor in her search for her long-lost child as she deals not only with the past, but with the return of her absent father who is tortured by his own demons, and the mysterious stranger who was hired by him but who may represent an even greater threat than even Levine’s insatiable ambition for control! Readers share Taylor’s warm relationship with Ruby, her dearest friend and most intimate confidant, and the uneasy and emotion-packed truce with Patricia, the mother by adoption of a girl named Emma – who may well turn out to be Taylor’s long-lost child, Rebecca.
No Urn for the Ashes is action-packed to the very end. For more information on either the book or its creative author, please visit www.bayfirepress.com.
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TIP SHEET:
Midwest Book Review: “Unlocking the key to a discovery, which could potentially change the world, has its downside. Taylor loses her husband … and her daughter in a bizarre fire. Now eight years later as her second marriage is dissolving, Kevin, who was Taylor’s former colleague …surfaces and sparks the almost unimaginable: Taylor’s daughter may not be dead after all and her husband did not accidentally die, he was murdered. As all the plots unfold readers bear witness to Taylor’s emotional journey as she attempts to make sense of her past and how to deal with the dilemmas of the present. In this brilliant novel, author Alison Sawyer Current will delight mystery readers and those who enjoy moving character studies.”
Anita Finley, Boomer Magazine: “This is a compassionate, heart-rending tale of loss, grief, and hope set against the backdrop of a struggle to control the fate of the world’s future. No Urn for the Ashes offers a unique blend of adventure and psychological insight.”
What woman didn’t laugh in amazement when Lorena Bobbit hacked off her husband’s schlong as he slept or watch in disbelief as dentist Clara Harris drove her Mercedes over her philandering husband until she knew he was dead! Author Diana Sheets knows that real women want more! They are done with the lying memoirs and celebrity tales that mainly occupy the best-sellers list and crave something honest, something that captures the zaniness of real life in American today. American Suite is just such a book.
Sheets’s novel comprises the diaries of three women from an affluent, Protestant family; Arisa, Sophie and Rosalyn, whose perspectives often clash and whose diary entries frequently contradict one another. Arisa’s story is the central plot of American Suite. Single, in her mid-thirties and excited about a new life as a writer in the Flatlands, she has ditched her career in Manhattan along with her longtime partner, Ben, and severed ties to her widowed mother and married sister on the East Coast.
At the mercy of her romantic passions, she falls in love with the first male Flatlander she meets just days after arriving in the Midwest, only to find he has a wife and two children. Following a brief but disastrous visit from Ben, Arisa seeks therapy. Life gets worse when she visits New York over Christmas; family problems, finding that Ben has a new love, and an anxiety attack after visiting Ground Zero all force Arisa back to the Flatlands before fleeing to Schlectenberg where she falls in love with a screenwriter and Hollywood director. This lasts until she finds out he has filmed their debauched relationship as material for his new movie, Legs Wide Open! After absconding with the director’s Doberman and a short retreat in a monastery, she returns to the Flatlands determined to tell her version of the affair in her memoir, Shrill Quills & Broken Lenses: This Muse Bares All. From this point on, as Arisa’s life gets nuttier, the story just gets more hilarious as she falls in love with an ex-con and sicks the Doberman on a stalking Peeping Tom who loses his “family jewels” to the Doberman’s iron jaws and has them reattached later by a surgeon.
Rosalyn and Sophie’s stories are interwoven all the while with Arisa’s, and the reader catches up with Sophie’s life as her husband loses his job and Sophie lusts after her son’s tutor. When Sophie’s sons embrace conflicting religions, sailing becomes the family hobby as a means of creating some kind of unity until the boat gets damaged during a race. The sisters decide to celebrate a multicultural December holiday in New York along with Arisa’s ex-con lover, Roy. It turns out to be a huge disaster, but one that glitters nevertheless. Sophie’s diary ends as she embarks on her own ‘memoir,’ Sophie’s Seven Simple Steps to the Perfect Life.
Last, but definitely not least, is Rosalyn’s story. From her diary, readers learn she is a Jewish mother whom God has challenged by making her Christian. We share in her pain as she loses her husband of forty-four years and her joy when she finds Saul, her new partner and love of her life; her anger when she is discarded by her children and her devastation when Saul dies. Inconsolable in her grief, she decides to convert to Judaism and writes her memoir, The Hadassah Chronicles.
The novel concludes with the Peeping Tom seeking revenge for the loss of his virility. He breaks into Arisa’s house where he sees newspaper articles about their scandalous altercation. Arisa returns. Shots are fired. Television viewers are urged to stay tuned for the latest breaking news. Thus, we get a glimpse of today’s American family. Not perfect, but thriving despite its dysfunction. American Suite is a zany, poignant saga that rejoices in the strength and resilience of these three strong women and revels in the complexity of life’s journey.
This exceptional, character-driven novel has received rave reviews and has the makings of becoming a box-office smash hit. For more information on Dr. Diana E. Sheets, please visit her website at: http://www.literarygulag.com.
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TIP SHEET:
Kathleen Kubik, author, Neither Sand Nor Sea: “… edgy comedy of manners. What happens when a WASP family becomes multicultural…a “chick lit” novel that upends our notions about romance, celebrity, family, identity, and our seemingly insatiable hunger for memoir to ask, “Who are we really, and what are we becoming? Diana Sheets has written an incredibly innovative novel…cleverly tells the story of three women, a mother and her two daughters, through compelling diary entries …each juggling their own lives and personal relationships, as well as the often antagonistic familial one among the three of them. Ms. Sheets has skillfully kept each character in character…and their stories are told in such a way that each voice is clearly defined. To simply say, ‘It’s a real page turner,’ somehow doesn’t seem to do American Suite justice, but that is exactly what this book is. I couldn’t wait to discover what wonderful writing awaited me on the next page. My congratulations to Ms. Sheets on an exceptional story.”
Jerry Sander, author of Unlimited Calling (Certain Restrictions Apply): “”Diana Sheets is unafraid of taking on the sacred cows of ‘chick lit’ in a sweeping family saga that offers up sexy men, violent and treacherous romance, dull marriage, soulful union and resourceful women. . . . Religious and spiritual confusions vie for attention with family loyalties and geographic rootedness as a New Yorker moves to the Midwest in search of a good-enough life.”
Although the Cost Basis legislation which requires brokers to report their clients’ cost basis has gone into effect as of January 1, 2011, what most investors don’t realize is that the requirement is only for securities purchased after January 1, 2011. That means that brokerage firms are only responsible for what was purchased this year going forward and not for the millions upon millions of shares that investors currently own. This is potentially a huge problem for investors because at the end of the day, they are responsible for accurately reporting their capital gains/losses to the IRS.
In the last several years, Cost Basis has taken center stage with the IRS, Congress and the Financial Services industry. The focus began back in 2005 when the IRS reported over $11 Billion dollars in underreported capital gains by taxpayers in their Tax Gap Study. Then in 2008, the Economic Stabilization Act was passed by Congress which included the Cost Basis Legislation and since then, the financial industry has been busy making sure that they will be compliant going forward from 2011 for stocks and 2012 for mutual funds.
So what does that mean for an investor with a broker and an investor without a broker? Practically the same thing, unless your brokerage firm is going to provide you with your cost basis for the stocks you already own as a customer service. If not, then it means that you will have to calculate and be legally responsible for your cost basis information as much as the guy who trades online in his underwear at 2:00 a.m.! As many investors already know, trying to get the purchase or sale price of all your reinvested dividends, corporate actions, and other critical pieces of information necessary to calculate your adjusted cost basis, is time consuming, frustrating and susceptible to human error.
Recently there have been articles and blogs telling investors where they can go to research pricing and corporate action information in order to calculate their cost basis, but Cost Basis adjustment was always a very difficult calculation, even for professionals, so how is an investor supposed to research and calculate this information accurately enough to report to the Internal Revenue Service? What wasn’t widely known until now is that there is an amazing online tool available to the public. It is called NetBasis and is available at www.netbasis.com.
NetBasis can automatically calculate the adjusted cost basis for any security going back as far as 1925. It will take into consideration all corporate actions as well as any possible dividend returns or return of capital that may have occurred during the exact holding period of the investment, so the information is specifically tailored to the individual investor. It isn’t a table where you try to see where your investment fits in, nor is it just a pricing list where you have to figure out the rest. You simply choose your security, enter in your purchase and sales date(s) and number of shares, and NetBasis does the rest in seconds. It also gives you the ability to choose your accounting method which investors are now able to do under the Cost Basis legislation. NetBasis can also calculate the cost basis for securities that were gifted or inherited.
NetBasis is a system that was originally designed for the financial services industry. A professional version of NetBasis is currently being used by brokerage firms, accounting firms, Fortune 500 companies, and universities, but now everyday American investors can access the same tool and get the same accurate results. For a small fee of $19.50, an investor can enter multiple buys and sells for one security and receive their adjusted cost basis, gain/loss, sale proceeds, fair market value, and a detailed accounting page that provides a chronological listing of all of the corporate actions and other adjustments that have occurred to your security.
After collecting literally hundreds of vintage tales of Hollywood legends over the years, Stephen Schochet not only wrote a book that everyone could enjoy on the glamorous, and not so glamorous, stories of Hollywood icons, but also created audiobooks. As explained in an interview with Reuters, this entrepreneur told two kinds of stories on his tour bus; origin stories – telling how things we take for granted came to be, and funny anecdotes. He not only read a lot of books to find his material, but also tried to meet people who were connected to the famous – like housekeepers – that he could garner some tidbits from! His book is a special blend of biography, history and legends and covers scandalous yarns on some of Hollywood’s greatest characters – from Shirley Temple and Lucille Ball to Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney and Michael Jackson.
Hollywood Stories: Short, Entertaining Anecdotes About the Stars and Legends of the Movies! (Hollywood Publishing) is packed with wild and wonderful short tales on many famous stars, movies and directors – anyone who has been a part of the world’s most fascinating and unpredictable industry!
Schochet is also the author and narrator of two audiobooks. The first is Tales of Hollywood which started as a way to highlight the origins of how famous things in Hollywood began, combined with humorous tales about the stars – for which he masterfully provided background music and sound effects to add realism. The second project, Fascinating Walt Disney, was a huge hit – telling stories of how Walt created Mickey Mouse, Disneyland, Snow White and all his endearing characters, causing the host of one radio show to dub Schochet ‘The best storyteller about Hollywood we have ever heard.’
The author covers the gamut when it comes to situational stories; from the one about a bus full of tourists at Universal Studies who were viewing the famous motel from the movie Psycho and who screamed in terror as a tall man, dressed in drag, carrying a large knife and looking remarkably like Norman Bates, charged the tram with a convincing maniacal expression– only to find out it was actor Jim Carrey having some fun – to the story of how Walt Disney overprotected his two daughters from the limelight in fear of their being kidnapped, to the point that when one daughter found out from a classmate that her father was THE Walt Disney, she went home and asked for his autograph!
Hollywood Stories truly has something for everyone. It is a thoroughly entertaining book that features a remarkable cast of Hollywood’s legendary characters and icons and is jam-packed with surprising and funny tales with often unpredictable endings. No matter which page the book is opened on, there will be some fascinating part of Hollywood history to be savored! Check out this author’s website at: www.hollywoodstories.com.
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TIP SHEET:
Stephen Schochet is willing to do in-studio interviews as well as on location at famous Hollywood sights, such as Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the Chateau Marmont Hotel, etc.; places that will serve as the perfect backdrop to some of his best stories.
Jan Wahl, KRON TV San Francisco: “A wild, fun ride through Tinsel Town, past and present!”
The Midwest Book Review: “Hollywood Stories is packed from cover to cover with fascinating tales.”
Tim Sika, Host of the radio show Celluloid dreams on KSJS in San Jose: “The best storyteller about Hollywood we have ever heard.”
Joe Mazza, King of Late Night Radio, Genesis Radio Network: “Probably one of the most entertaining and knowledgeable guests in regards to the movies.”
Jordan Rich, WBZ in Boston: “Stephen is a remarkable guest with instant recall of Hollywood Stories that keep audiences glued to the radio. He makes regular appearances on my show and never fails to entertain.”
Jim Bohannon, Host of the Nationally Syndicated Jim Bohannon Show and America in the Morning: “Stephen really knows Hollywood! In all the times I’ve had him on my night time Jim Bohannon Show, he ALWAYS surprised me with at least one amazing tidbit of information I’d never have suspected. Usually, it’s half a dozen or more.”
At the age of 26, Farrah Gray has achieved more than many people achieve in a lifetime. Raised in the impoverished south side of Chicago, Dr. Gray defied the odds and became history’s youngest self-made millionaire, beyond the field of entertainment, by age 14. He was also the youngest person to have an office on Wall Street and the youngest to receive an honorary doctorate. Now he is an inspiration to millions and an international bestselling author. Gray’s books, Reallionaire, Get Real Get Rich, and The Truth Shall Make You Rich, have been translated into Russian, Korean, Indonesian and Vietnamese with book sales in Africa, Australia, Europe, and Central and South America.
Gray has also been named as one of the CNN’s African-American First History Makers and as one of the 20 Modern Black History Makers in the 20th anniversary issue of Upscale magazine. Chair of the Farrah Gray Foundation and spokesman for the National Coalition for Homeless, as well as the National Bone Marrow Donor Program, he has been invited to the White House eight times with President Clinton, President Bush and, most recently, with President Barack Obama.
Gray began his entrepreneurial, personal, and civic development as a stellar young citizen at six-years-old selling homemade body lotion and his own hand-painted rocks as bookends door-to-door. At seven he was carrying business cards reading “21st Century CEO.” At eight, Gray became co-founder of Urban Neighborhood Enterprise Economic Club (U.N.E.E.C.) on Chicago’s Southside. U.N.E.E.C. was the forerunner of New Early Entrepreneur Wonders (NE2W), the flagship organization he opened on Wall Street. NE2W enlisted, educated, and engaged “at-risk” youth by creating and developing legal ways for them to acquire additional income.
Between the ages of 12 and 16, Gray founded and operated business ventures that included KIDZTEL pre-paid phone cards, the One Stop Mail Boxes & More franchise, and The Teenscope “Youth AM/FM” interactive teen talk show. Gray was also Executive Producer of a comedy show on the Las Vegas Strip and owner of Farr-Out Foods, “Way-Out Food with a Twist,” aimed at young people with the company’s first strawberry-vanilla syrup product. Farr-Out Foods generated orders exceeding $1.5 million.
As a pre-teen, Gray reached 12 million listeners and viewers every Saturday night as co-host of “Backstage Live,” a syndicated television and radio simulcast in Las Vegas. Gray’s inspirational spirit and grounded personality sparked speaking requests from organizations around the country. Gray’s sense of social responsibility motivated him to create the non-profit organization, The Farrah Gray Foundation. Among other programs and initiatives, his foundation focuses on inner city community-based entrepreneurship education and provides scholarship and grant assistance for students from at-risk backgrounds to attend HBCU’s (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). Gray donates his honorariums from speaking engagements (which can be upwards of $15,000) and the proceeds of his book to his foundation in what he refers to as his “self-imposed” youth tax. The Farrah Gray Foundation is also in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation, launching entrepreneurship programs in inner-city schools across the country.
Gray is currently the CEO of Farrah Gray Publishing (FGP) which is distributed by HCI Books, which published the world famous New York Times, USA Today, and Guinness Book of World Records, as well as the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Chicken Soup for the Soul has sold more than 112 million copies, with titles translated into more than 40 languages and total retail sales of Chicken Soup for the Soul branded merchandise have topped $1.3 billion.
Reallionaire, as well as other titles by Dr. Gray, is available online and in bookstores everywhere. Learn more about this inspiring figure at: www.FarrahGray.com.
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TIP SHEET:
Bill Clinton, (Former) President of the United States of America: “I know Farrah Gray and we have discussed his future. His motivation determines what he will do. His attitude determines how well he will succeed at making a difference.”
O: The Oprah Magazine dubbed Farrah Gray an “all-star” with “priceless advice.”
Suze Orman, New York Times Bestselling Author: “You are just the best and the real thing.”
Good Morning America: “Farrah Gray is the ultimate American success story.”
ABC 20/20: “America’s Reallionaire.”
CNN: “Farrah Gray is the youngest African American of his generation to make his mark on Wall Street and to become a millionaire.”
MSN.com placed Farrah Gray on its 2010 Young Tycoons List along with Mark Zuckerberg.
Receiving rave reviews and being featured in magazines is Leonard Szymczak’s latest book, The Roadmap Home (Booksurge – Division of Amazon.com). This insightful book masterfully blends the author’s thirty-five years as a therapist with his own personal challenges faced in life, and results in an inspiring guide that will steer readers through their own spiritual awakening.
In his amazing book, the author has covered the gamut from personal growth and spirituality to guidance for those needing help in their quest for inner peace. Szymczak shows how we can use our ever-present GPS (‘Guiding Power of Spirit’) to light up our road to love and contentment.
The Roadmap Home has been featured in the September issue of Black Tie magazine and reviewed in the November issue of Julien’s Journal, as well as the subject of a personal appearance by the author on Via Times television show in Chicago, and numerous radio interviews extending from California, Michigan, Wisconsin, Montana, Minnesota and Arizona, where the feedback from listeners has been extremely positive.
Szymczak uses personal stories and experiences, examples, exercises, and self-mastery tools to transform pain and problems into opportunities for personal growth by answering questions of who we are and where we are heading; showing how we get there with the help of our ever-present GPS! All aspects of these things guide readers to what we each consider ‘home,’ that includes improved health, relationships, finances, forgiveness and love. Its powerfully compelling messages of hope will help them learn how to feel true joy, exercise free will, delight in the senses, and recognize their talents – all in order to fulfill their dreams and take them to that ‘place’ that feels safe and secure.
A childhood filled with constant turmoil due to his father’s mental illness, domestic violence and parents who constantly pointed the finger of blame, taught Leonard Szymczak that sometimes the greatest gifts come out of our deepest wounds. He believes the gift he received as a young boy was a quest to find ‘home’ – and his journey showed him that ‘home’ is within each of us – we just have to learn how to get there! Anyone reading his book will have the opportunity to learn how to use his guide to help them find their own way home.
Leonard Szymczak is a licensed clinical social worker who conducts successful seminars and workshops, as well as maintaining a therapy practice in southern California. For more information on this inspiring and compassionate individual, please visit his interactive website at: www.theroadmaphome.com.
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TIP SHEET:
Midwest Book Review: “Home is a place where you are comfortable and can be very much yourself. “The Roadmap Home: Your GPS to Inner Peace” is an inspirational read from Leonard Szymczak as he encourages readers to find their way home, something many have lost and have failed to find in recent times in their lives. Using GPS, or the Guiding Power of Spirit, he hopes people will find their own personal home where they can love and experience inner peace. “The Roadmap Home” is a thoughtful and solidly recommended read that shouldn’t be missed.”
Arielle Ford, author of The Soulmate Secret: “The Roadmap Home: Your GPS to Inner Peace is an intelligent and highly accessible book that blends practical psychology with heart-opening spirituality. If you are ready to heal on all levels, read this book.”
Karen Casey, best-selling author of Each Day A New Beginning: “I heartily endorse The Roadmap Home to the seeker of ‘a better way.’ ”
Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D., author of Love is Letting Go of Fear: “The Roadmap Home offers us hope. Leonard Szymczak provides an honest portrayal of his personal life and demonstrates that hardships can offer blessings in disguise. He provides a map to help us connect with the Guiding Power of Spirit so we can find our way Home.”
The Rev. Edwene Gaines, author of The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity: “Read this book! It will lift your heart and give hope and help for all on the spiritual pathway. Leonard Szymczak shares a treasure trove of ideas to bring a loving lasting peace to our hearts as we find our way home to wholeness.”
Harry Tucker, strategy advisor and author of 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know: Collective Wisdom from The Experts: “I have been forever impacted by the beautiful stories, exercises and experiences that Leonard so wonderfully presents in his newest book. It is a powerful extension of the man himself. He answers the questions of who we are, where we come from, where we are going, and how we get there. By sharing his own personal story, Leonard immediately resonates with the reader, assuring them that we are all on a journey together.”
In his book The Liberal Betrayal of America and the Tea Party Firestorm, Dr. William Davis Eaton, relates how it all began on December 3, 1964 on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, when war was declared against all aspects of American society.
Following Berkeley’s lead, campus protests, sit-ins, and riots were instigated in hundreds of colleges and universities across the country, all propagating an insurgent hatred of America. As the rioting students of the 60’s graduated into society they began their “long march through the institutions” of America, generating what has come to be known as the culture war. Some stayed on to secure campus radicalism as tenured professors. This is not conjecture on Eaton’s part – it is based on what he himself learned as a former professor who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a PhD in political science.
Eaton’s book maintains that “the culture war was, in fact, a muted Civil War with the purpose of destroying that which exists and replacing it with something else. This new Civil War directly affects, among others, universities and schools, the media, churches, sexual behavior, the family, courts, the rule of law – and has, in one way or another, captured, corrupted or destroyed the main ideals and institutions of our nation.”
However, Eaton believes “this Civil War lacked a coherent goal – a leader to form and guide its deceptive power to a specific end – to create a vision of what was to replace what was being destroyed.” In the presidential election of 2008 that leader appeared, and to a restless nation, his cries of Hope and Change rang true. The meaning of ‘transformative’ change that was hinted at in campaign rhetoric became abundantly clear after January 20, 2009 when Americans were informed that their country is no longer a Christian nation, or an exceptional nation. “That,” Eaton says, “is when the Sleeping Giant of the true America was awakened and the Tea Party was born.” The Liberal Betrayal of America and the Tea Party Firestorm describes “transformative” change as the instrument of an insurgent intent to destroy and replace. “But if the institutions and hopes of a free society are to be discarded and society transformed, both logic and history tell us that the society to come will be un-free and without hope.”
Eaton points to the description made by the first president of the Czech Republic after the breakup of the Soviet Union when he said “totalitarian tyranny is layer upon layer of impenetrable bureaucracies,” with each bureau designed to monitor and regulate some aspect of the lives of those under its boot until the lives and hopes of every citizen is subject to the long tentacles of government regulation. Eaton believes this is exactly what awoke the sleeping American giant in the form of the Tea Party that saw the enactment of healthcare, financial regulation and government control of the auto, banking, and other industries as leading to a complete transformation of their system of free enterprise and constitutional government.
Dr. Eaton believes his book gives answers to why Americans were so ready to receive the Tea Party; fearful that their nation was starting to look more like the mayhem in Europe, created by entitlement and dependence on government, than one that was founded on private enterprise and individual freedoms.
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TIP SHEET:
Blogcritics Review: “…Liberal Betrayal of America and the Tea Party Firestorm is a fascinating book for people of all persuasions. The Right is going to love it, and the Left should read it to find out what the Tea Party and their ilk really think. In the end my opinion is that William Davis Eaton is a kind of a cranky old fellow, but definitely a compelling one.”
Night Owl Review: “…vivid account of 60’s campus turmoil by Berkeley prof…
National Review of Conservative Books: “Forceful prose…should be a hit with Republicans.”
The Nation in Review: “Should be a hit with Republicans.”
Jack Of Alltrades Amazon Book Review: “Not every day a Berkeley professor attacks the liberal elite, but Eaton has pulled it off here – and with gusto. Tea Party believers will want to read this!
