Books

Every war the U.S. has fought since World War II was a war of choice. None of them were necessary. They represent a colossal waste of money and human lives. The U.S. has had no real adversary since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992. Yet, over the last thirty-two years, it has spent over $17 trillion on its military, fighting conflicts it didn’t need to fight, buying military junk it didn’t need, building hundreds of bases around the world which only serve to create animosity and chaos. Now the U.S. government is over $34 trillion in debt. The American public likewise is awash in debt, to the tune of $18 trillion. The message of this book is simply this . . .

War is making us poor! War is destroying us as a people. War is bankrupting our country politically, spiritually, socially, and economically. Peace is not possible without ousting and replacing the power-drunk, empire-building, war-crazed lunatics now in control of our foreign policy and military institutions.

NOW AVAILABLE:

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Let me be absolutely clear. While RFK Jr represents a vast improvement over the current crop of swamp creatures seeking the presidency in 2024, my latest book is not an endorsement of RFK Jr for President. Realistically, there isn’t now and never will be a perfect person for the job. RFK Jr certainly means well but has some very indefensible and unevolved views, e.g. blind support for Israel, muddled thinking on health care. BUT in his defense and offering a solid justification for supporting his candidacy, he’s a thinking man, a good decent human being, and most importantly for the survival of the human race, he’s calling the endless US wars a fraud, and our entire foreign policy an abomination. He wants peace and cooperation, honesty and transparency, both here in America and abroad. He believes government should work to the benefit of all citizens, not just the rich and powerful.

What this short book is saying is that WE DESPERATELY NEED A CONGRESS which embraces those values and that framework for governance, whether RFK Jr gets elected or not.

Many seem unable to wrap their heads around this simple, straightforward call to action. So let me elaborate.

If RFK Jr. — or someone like him — is elected in 2024, as a president who truly puts the the welfare of all citizens ahead of Wall Street, the big banks, the military-industrial complex, the ruling elite and other powerful special interests, thus serves the needs of the all citizens, not just the wealthy elite, THEN HE WILL NEED A CONGRESS THAT SUPPORTS AND PROMOTES HIS AGENDA.

But if one of the “bad guys” wins – as has happened for decades, subjecting our nation to economic plunder, endless war, corporate welfare, pay-to-play politics, divide-and-conquer tyranny, thus cheating everyday citizens out of their fair share of our vast national wealth – we will need a Congress that will stop the decline and keep the worst from happening. We’ll need a Congress that will stop the looting of our economy, the wanton destruction of the environment, the promotion of militarization, the marginalization of everyday citizens, the attack on privacy and human rights, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite.

So either way … WE NEED A “PEOPLE’S CONGRESS”! 

It’s obvious, wouldn’t you agree?

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This is the first of a three-part series, intended to inspire and enlist the public to end the endless wars before the militarism and imperial ambitions of the U.S. destroy the country.

It’s a powerful and empowering collection of commentaries and insights by some of today’s most respected political thinkers. The world is a mess and America is in big trouble. Despite the finger-pointing, it is the U.S. itself which is causing its own problems. Perpetual war is destroying our nation. To stop the unfolding disaster, we must honestly look at how our own leadership and policies have led the country astray. This book is the perfect place to start.

Featuring commentary by Noam Chomsky, Larry Wilkerson, Paul Craig Roberts, Mark Skidmore, Coleen Rowley, William J. Astore, Abby Martin, Dan Kovalik, Lee Camp, Finian Cunningham, Michael T. Klare, Cynthia McKinney, Scott Ritter, Joe Lombardo, Bruce Gagnon, Norman Solomon, Peter Kuznick, Ajamu Baraka, Margaret Kimberley, Matthew Hoh, Garland Nixon, and Dennis Kucinich.

As an eBook . . .

As a Deluxe Paperback . . .

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Love Connection is a very unique “love story”, based on real events. It’s set in Japan but spans three continents, with fascinating visits by the lovers to France, Morocco, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Benin, Nigeria, then a mind-boggling turn which I believe will shock you. Yes … this really happens to good, decent Japanese people! But don’t fret. Everything eventually works out very nicely. 

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LIVE FROM JAPAN! is a captivating, heart-warming, funny, and informative look at contemporary Japan, through the eyes of an American expat. I arrived for my first visit to Japan 13 years ago, am now married to a brilliant Japanese lady — she’s a music teacher, concert pianist, opera singer — and have lived here permanently for over eight years. My book is a collection of sixty anecdotes about the Land of the Rising Sun, its people, culture, traditions, and institutions.

Mind you, I live in a quiet, rustic, rural community 1 1/2 hours from Osaka. I’m surrounded by rice and bean fields. The loudest sound I hear is the ringing of temple bells three times a day at a local hilltop Shinto shrine. This is not the Japan of ultra-high technology and glitzy Westernization. This is the Japan of calm, dreamy landscapes; simple, unhurried farmers; long memories, deep history and time-honored traditions. It’s the Japan of family, community, respect for others, and resolute honesty. Even after all these years, I’m regularly shocked by the stark contrast between my current life and the my-way-or-the-highway, not-in-my-backyard, what’s-in-it-for-me, what’s-mine-is-mine-and-what’s-yours-is-mine-if-I-can-get-my-hands-on-it mentality I was conditioned to regard as normal and acceptable, growing up in post-modern, pre-dystopian America — specifically Detroit, Michigan.

If you come from the U.S. — or any country with European, Judeo-Christian roots — and are curious, as I have been all of my life, about this mysterious and fascinating place, I believe this book is a good place to begin discovering what makes Japan so unique and such a sharp contrast to countries of the West.

Join my journey of wonder and discovery!

As a Nook Book from Barnes & Noble
As a an iBook from the Apple Store
As an ebook from Scribd
As an ebook from Kobo (US)
Every popular ebook format at Smashwords
As a deluxe paperback direct from the printer

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WINNER OF THREE INT’L AND FOUR U.S. AWARDS FOR LITERARY HUMOR!

It was the early 90s. The usual number of people were suffering from plunging self-esteem. For the past decade, the book shelves had been bursting at their pressboard seams with every conceivable fix. Psychiatrists were booked up for months. Gurus were turning them away at the door. Lifestyle coaches were rolling in dough from workshops, book sales, self-help tapes, videos, tête-à-têtes, seminars. High priests, low priests, monks, ministers, astrologers, palmists, psalmists, phrenologists, hypnotists, aura readers, astral pocket jockeys, harmonic wave surfers, all were the rock stars of a new age of enlightenment.

But the zaniest of all of the obvious signs that the world had gone completely mad and people would embrace just about anything or anyone in a desperate attempt to conjure up the NEW YOU, was the lady we will meet in this book. Unorthodox? How about Alice in Wonderland strange. Weird. Off the charts. Barking mad. Totally whack. We’re talking about … Dr. Joy Smothers, the folk singing psychologist.

This is her story. This is how it all began!

Don’t be the last of your inner circles to experience this epic triumph of giddiness over political correctness and sanity!

You can get it right now . . .

As a Kindle ebook from Amazon (US)
As a deluxe paperback from Amazon (US)
As a Kindle ebook from Amazon (Canada)
As a Kindle ebook from Amazon (Great Britain)
As a Kindle ebook from Amazon (Australia)
As a Kindle ebook from Amazon (India)
As a Nook Book from Barnes & Noble
As a an iBook from the Apple Store
As an ebook from Scribd
As aa ebook from Kobo (US)
As an ebook from Kobo Indigo (Canada)
Every popular ebook format at Smashwords
As a deluxe paperback direct from the printer

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The Peace Dividend strategy, a comprehensive plan for “incentivizing” American citizens to start thinking about and embracing a peaceful future for our country, is now available in book form. 

The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World is a harsh indictment of U.S. policies over the past two-and-a-half decades.  With documentation based on three years of research, it establishes incontrovertibly that taxpayers have been defrauded out of no less than $4.82 trillion! With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, American citizens were promised a “peace dividend”, i.e. less money for war, more for peace and a good life for all.  Since then, the U.S. military under misguided leadership has attacked eight countries.  The defense budgets have exploded, buying a lot of junk that doesn’t work and military hardware we don’t need, and even more tragically, fighting wars we don’t even have to fight — all in pursuit of monomaniacal delusions of world empire. 

Good, decent citizens who mistakenly placed their trust in the leadership of this country, have footed the bill for this self-sabotaging folly and systemic corruption, which is now literally putting the human race at risk for complete annihilation.

It’s high time to change this disastrous course.  It’s also high time for redress and proper compensation to be made for this egregious abuse of power.

It’s time for a fresh new narrative, and a vibrant national conversation.  It’s time to start thinking and talking about peace again.  This will explain why and exactly how we begin.

The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World is available worldwide as a deluxe paperback . . .

Amazon / US . . . amzn.to/2cEhnCb
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/2c3mJsl

. . . and as an ebook in all popular electronic reader formats . . .

Amazon (Kindle) / US . . . amzn.to/2cpIRfQ
Amazon (Kindle) / UK . . . amzn.to/2cKXFsV
Amazon (Kindle) / Canada . . . amzn.to/2ciZKdl
Amazon (Kindle) / Japan . . . amzn.to/2cbf3TO
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/2cWxvzd
Kobo (US) . . . bit.ly/2phKIf3
Apple iTunes . . . apple.co/2cqw7an

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!!!Blinders Keepers_Cover_2nd Edition_200x300In this contemporary satire of political intrigue and social chaos, a young man is mistakenly labeled a terrorist and must survive a manhunt by government security agencies, in a paranoid and unraveling America. The president driven by desperation perpetrates an end-of-the-world hoax, attempting to re-establish some semblance of control and get himself re-elected.

This is social-political satire in the tradition of Jonathan Swift, Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, but revved up and spit-shined to take on the historical new levels of absurdity and dysfunction of the 21st Century.

“Blinders Keepers is the funniest satire on the incompetence and buffoonery of government since Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.  It’s dark, it’s weird, but frighteningly no more ridiculous than the world we currently live in.”  –  The Boston Journal

Amazon (Kindle) . . . amzn.to/1IiodLp
Amazon (Print) . . . amzn.to/1Ohf9T7
Apple iBooks . . . apple.co/1SPlhZ7
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/1mPC6a5
Kobo (US) . . . bit.ly/2qStRw4
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/1kb5Axk
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/1krvHQM

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!!!11-11-11_Cover_Book 1_200x300Meet Noah Tass. Follow him as he tries to escape his hopelessly hayseed hometown in Missouri.

Noah was turning 23 and desperate leave. Pulnick had forever been a septic blemish on the anemic face of rural Bible-belt America. Always bland and soporific, it was now being invaded by white supremacist meth heads, visited by an unprecedented crime wave, exploited by spiritualists and local politicos, and driven to hysteria by paranoid rumors that the world would end on November 11th.

Moreover, Noah’s personal life was becoming more convoluted by the day. Everything seemed to conspire against his singular need to get out of this dreary, dead-end, death-wish armpit of a town.

The irony is that  11 – 11 – 11  is what you call a feel-good novel.

Because you’ll feel real good about your own life, after you get a load of the losers who populate this living graveyard!

Amazon (Kindle) . . . amzn.to/1RQzupo
Amazon (Print) . . . amzn.to/1krreNU
Apple iBooks . . . apple.co/1JLG0uR
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/1nlgS2Z
Kobo (US) . . . bit.ly/2pY6mCz
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/1PwjEN8
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/1OjJp4a

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!!!12-12-12_Cover_Book 2_200x30012-12-12  is the story of a great nation falling apart and one young man’s quest for meaning in the midst of chaos. It takes the stuff of reality and pitches it to a high scream.

Open your mind but cover your ears. Knowledge is bliss but it’s loud and painful. Yet somehow still funny.

12-12-12  manages to tell it like it is by telling it like it isn’t. Granted, this is not what actually happened during 2012. But what unfolds is not more implausible. Nor is it less implausible. 12-12-12  is dark, ironic, witty, at times surrealistic and just plain weird. One reviewer calls it “laugh-out-loud brain food for hungry minds.

Amazon (Kindle) . . . amzn.to/1R75rYT
Amazon (Print) . . . amzn.to/1UfOpHb
Apple iBooks . . . apple.co/1Ojpwcl
Apple (iTunes) . . . apple.co/1R776xp
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/1wD1izo
Kobo (US) . . . bit.ly/2qSplhW
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/1NUVFVn
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/1NPpPLT

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!!!Petrocelli Cover_200x300Petrocelli  . . . a new crime thriller from the mercurial mind of John Rachel.

Lenny Petrocelli had it made until his gangland bosses decided to set him up as the fall guy for a child trafficking prostitution ring.

If this gritty novel rings true, it’s for good reason. Petrocelli is based on actual stories from the violent and gruesome world of human trafficking, where millions of children and adolescents across the globe are held in bondage as slaves.

Amazon (US) . . . amzn.to/1XIWg2I
 Amazon (UK) . . . amzn.to/1k3b51W
Amazon (Canada) . . . amzn.to/1Rnul4B
Amazon (Germany) . . . amzn.to/1Q0EHKc
Amazon (Print) . . . amzn.to/1GHrkMb
Apple iBooks . . . apple.co/1S7P6F7
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/1PktCnc
Kobo (US) . . . bit.ly/2qJgJx9
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/1RntW2h
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/1GWaF7l

Petrocelli has both stirred a lot of controversy and been getting outstanding reviews. Certainly I would never intentionally upset anyone but I appreciate the appreciation.

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The Man Who Loved Too Much – Book 3: Oxymoron

How do we function in a world which is both as randomly and intentionally cruel, as it is randomly and intentionally kind? Can we make sense of our lives when so much around us makes no sense?

In this, the final book of the trilogy, we find out what it means to be a “man who loves too much”.  Even more importantly, we discover if Billy Green is such a man.

Whew!  Heavy stuff.

Amazon (Kindle) . . . amzn.to/1LJnMcX
Amazon (Paperback) . . . amzn.to/1NZPU9Y
Apple iBooks . . . apple.co/1W9y6gF
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/1fvzxXD
Kobo (US) . . . bit.ly/2pT5Mrg
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/1LJnRgJ
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/1K07Yzy

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The Billy Green saga continues! . . . a complicated, joyful, twisted, sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic, always unpredictable journey.

Billy is growing up and more determined than ever to find meaning in life and comfort in love. He’s discovering what it really means to be an adult.  Surely, no one said it would be pretty. He certainly had ample fair warning, growing up in Detroit. But nothing ever prepares us for some things.

Like a shattering loss of innocence.

The Man Who Loved Too Much – Book 2: Entendre

Available from all of the usual suspects!

Amazon (Kindle) . . . amzn.to/18x1ZnS
Amazon (Paperback) . . . amzn.to/1xfmjp3
Apple iBooks . . . apple.co/1P29tDl
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/18OGY85
Kobo (US) . . . bit.ly/2pqOoaF
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/1AMUCPz
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/1Du7Esh

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It’s here!  And it won’t go away!  Gosh by golly!

From the novelist also known as Prince of Pulpless Fiction — the self-ordained high priest of digital parody, a fickle  purveyor of whimsical fluff purported to be cutting edge art, a peripatetic promoter of peace-love-and-prosthetics as the post-modern palliate for the dull tedium that we call life — the opening salvo of a new trilogy, a truly ambitious if completely superfluous literary undertaking, at best a passive-aggressive con which insults the declining tastes and flawed judgment of all Americans from sea to shining sea, and their drooling deferential wannabees worldwide. Yes, it’s a . . . truly astonishing achievement!

It all begins immediately — we sincerely believe, right on time — herewith:

The Man Who Loved Too Much – Book 1: Archipelago

Fellow lovers of literature! Therein we take up the story of Billy Green. With all of the swell advantages of growing up in beautiful Detroit, Michigan . . . what could possibly go wrong? Aren’t you maybe just a little bit curious?  Darn . . . I know I was.

And folks, because I genuinely believe in the power of impulse, there’s no reason to postpone a decision you will always regret. This epic literary faux pas is available NOW!

Amazon (Kindle) . . . amzn.to/1tyIRiw
Amazon (Paperback) . . . amzn.to/1z8F8aD
Apple iBooks . . . apple.co/1nkebQx
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/ZDnQVO
Kobo (US) . . . bit.ly/2qSmc0J
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/1w62HOX
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/1r6qWYQ

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Democracy at both the local and national levels recently has been under savage assault. Martin Truth’s fight was but one of many such struggles to restore the meaning of representative government to a system that had been corrupted by big money and corporate power.

Martin Truth is a bright, young, idealistic, Green Party candidate, who in his bid for the congressional seat of a very conservative district in Ohio, teams with a beautiful, brilliant, fiery African-American intern to combat the slick deceptions and ruthless tactics of a sweet-talking right wing incumbent.

It is the inspiring story of a small, determined group of  committed activists who either never knew or forgot the meaning of the word ‘impossible’. Using a unique and powerful strategy for throwing liars and crooks out of public office and restoring representative democracy to our country, politics would never again be the same.

Most importantly, An Unlikely Truth embraces the hope that not all is lost — that there is a “narrative” which can begin to put America back on track, render government again of the people, by the people, and for the people.

An Unlikely Truth is available worldwide from Literary Vagabond Books.

Amazon (Kindle) . . . amzn.to/1jetpiY
Amazon (Print) . . . amzn.to/1lddvsp
Apple iBooks . . . apple.co/230Kww6
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/1l5FmuG
Kobo (US) . . . bit.ly/2pqLUcz
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/1fIU3Mq
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/ODoAF8