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"Gregory R. Piché's wide-ranging examination of these four major trials, their outcomes, and their lasting impact creates a spirited survey that will appeal to a diverse audience of historians, transportation buffs, legal beagles, and general-interest readers. It's thoroughly engrossing reading offering many insights and thought-provoking moments."-D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book ReviewHenry Ford: oracular genius, people's hero, or narcissistic, autocratic bully? In Gregory R. Piche's new book, The Four Trials of Henry Ford, four landmark court cases reveal the dark side of Ford's legal clashes and the quirks of his character and personality that ushered his image in the public's imagination from mechanical savant and populist sage to isolated, imperious bigot.In recounting the Ford litigation, Piché examines Ford's parallel manipulation of public media to advance his own political and narcissistic agenda to become a public sage and an American President. It follows the initial rise of his reputation as a Progressive capitalist to its ultimate erosion as a mean-spirited bigot and contributor to the propaganda that fueled the Holocaust.

Almost everybody who was born in the post-agrarian period separated by the two great wars grew up in a place whose growing pains were painfully obvious. It was into such a place that my parents moved with my brother and me in tow. Our house was small, but serviceable; our neighbors forthcoming, but not so morbidly curious that they pried, and our world expanded in one way as it shrank in another. The sky was as blue as it is said to be in heaven. And we were so adrift in space and time that we became the terrestrial astronauts that so troubled Rod Serling that he had to write something about us each week for television.Here the Main Streets of our grandparents were left to developers, who preferred parking lots to promenades. Here generously proportioned school buildings beckoned to a fertile population that would supply them so handily that, once a prototype was made, it could be endlessly reproduced. Here pastimes flourished as they never had before. Here mostly white people settled in as Ricky Nelson serenaded them. Here needs were synonymous with desires. And here a culture that was made possible by the received wisdom of Father Coughlin, Leo Durocher, and Lawrence Welk sat back, adjusted its goggles, and proceeded, with limitations that grew with every sack of fertilizer that guaranteed a more perfect lawn, to have the time of its life.It was here that I grew up and here (mostly) that I have roamed, from ball field to abbreviated living room to the topsy-turvy relations between hard reality and plausible delusion. I hope, in capturing some of its essence in prose, that the small underbellies which often lurk beneath the bigger ones become crudely, if only temporarily, visible.

An historical murder mystery based on real events.Who would want to murder the world's most famous philosopher?Turns out: nearly everyone.In 1649, Descartes was invited by the Queen of Sweden to become her Court Philosopher. Though he was the world's leading philosopher, his life had by this point fallen apart. He was 53, penniless, living in exile in the United Provinces, alone. With much trepidation but not much choice, he arrived in Stockholm in mid-October.Shortly thereafter he was dead.Enter Adrien Baillet. A likeable misfit with a mysterious backstory, he arrives just as the French Ambassador desperately needs an impartial Frenchman to prove that Descartes died of natural causes.But solving the mystery of Descartes's death (Baillet soon learns) requires first solving the mystery of Descartes's life, with all its dangerous secrets ... None of it is easy, as nearly everyone is a suspect and no one can be trusted.But Baillet somehow perseveres, surprising everyone as he figures it all out-all the way to the explosive end.

A brilliant artificial intelligence (AI) scientist, Dr. Alan Boyd, develops a new program that integrates part of his brain with a computer's operating system. The program, Alan 2, can anticipate a user's needs and automatically perform many tasks. A large software company, International Microsystems (IM) desperately wants the program and tempts Dr. Boyd with huge sums of money, but when Dr. Boyd refuses their offer, IM sabotages his job, leaving him in a difficult financial situation.Dr. Boyd turns to Alan 2 for an answer to his financial problems, and Alan 2 develops plan Alpha, which is a cyber robin hood scheme to rob from rich corporations via a credit card scam.Alan and his girlfriend Kaitlin travel to Mexico where they live the good life funded by plan Alpha, but the FBI cybercrime division has discovered part of Alan 2's cyber escapades, and two agents, Rachel and Stu, trace the crime through the TOR network and Bitcoin.Alan 2 discovers the FBI is on to them and advises Alan and Kaitlin to change locations. A dramatic chase ensues taking them to St. Thomas, a cruise ship bound for Spain, and finally to Morocco.Will they escape detection? They will if Alan 2's Plan Beta can be implemented in time. Or is 'Plan B' something altogether different than it appears to be, something wholly sinister that will affect the entire population of the world?

A story of hopeless love-a serial philanderer and gambler married to a woman much younger-and impossible love-his wife, Casey Googan, and a black boxer. Turn of the century Boston comes alive with crew races, balloon races, boxing, rat-baiting, and fashion competitions judged by Isabella Stuart Gardner. Boston's sculling champion, blue-blood Foxhall Codman, is obsessed with the possibility that the phantom sculler who rowed through him in fog on the Charles River was a woman. Thirty-thousand spectators-Brahmins and geeks, catch-penny operators and thimble riggers-turn out for the epic race on the Charles, a battle of the sexes prefiguring Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King seven decades later.

Sixteen-year-old Davy Stoneman accompanies his Aunt Esther to the train station to greet his Uncle Marsh, returning home to Twin Forks, Texas from World War I in 1919. When Davy's uncle steps off the train, Davy realizes that the army has sent him home to die.Aunt Easter seeks the help of Sister Rose, a black woman known for her herbs and cures. As Sister Rose slowly restores Uncle Marsh's health, a friendship develops between Sister Rose's teenage son Daniel and Davy. Through his new friend, Davy meets Rachel, a black girl his own age, and he finds himself attracted to her.The three young people are soon working together to repair an old house that will be used to teach black children to read and write. As a result, Davy and his uncle and aunt find themselves caught up in events that lead to death and tragedy. In the face of tragedy, Davy learns that the true nature of each person is deeper than one's skin, that depravity can reshape a soul into something ugly and mean and destructive, and that the courage to confront such depravity, no what matter the cost, is often learned through the 'courage of others'.

The Butterfly Prison is a tapestry of vignettes that tells the hushed-up, little stories that unfold within a world characterized by diminishment and shame, the stories of the disenfranchised, the stories of Paz and Mella.As each fights for dignity in the shadows of poverty, harassment and exploitation, their decisions tell a compelling story of choice, consequence, systematic injustice, and the inner magic of the human constitution.Tender and thought provoking, unusual and rule-breaking, The Butterfly Prison bites and delights as it redefines our notions of beauty, freedom, heroes, criminals, and war."With unsettling metaphors and an intense narrative thread, Tamara Pearson makes you work for it. But you'll be glad you did. This is a genuinely original and tender insight into the forgotten lives and dreams that long to break through the cracks in the paving stones of our broken societies." - Iain Bruce, Film maker, journalist, and author of various nonfiction books including The Porto Alegre Alternative: Direct Democracy in Action"In language that bounces and jabs like a prize fighter, Tamara Pearson has given us a novel that mixes unforgettable stories with the politics of power. Supremely readable and supremely insightful." -Greg Palast, author of the New York Times bestsellers, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy"Pearson's writing is poetic, haunting, and acidic. In the Butterfly Prison, she interweaves compelling characters with the much larger issues of war, ecological collapse, and human suffering. The Butterfly Prison is a meditation on the similarities and differences of the prisons that people are forced to live in and the ways that they resist their imprisonment. This is a story about the power of human creativity in the face of indifference and violence. It is a reminder of the importance of imagination and creating new stories as weapons against evil and self-annihilation. "- Mai'a Williams, co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering"This is a novel that talks about the hardest things, and in such an engrossing way. The character Paz just blew me away. "- Michael Fox, co-director of documentary Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas and co-author of both Venezuela Speaks!: Voices from the Grassroots and Latin America's Turbulent Transitions"Tamara Pearson has drawn upon her extensive experience observing Latin American political movements to write this promising new novel. "- George Ciccariello-Maher, author of We Created Chavez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution"I strongly recommend Tamara Pearson's novel La Belleza, for its political and social insight, uniqueness, and moving prose. The Butterfly Prison is a powerful novel that has an impact, it will stay relevant for a very long time. " -Michael Albert, author and co-author of over twenty books, including Looking Forward, Thought Dreams: Radical Theory for the 21st Century, and Parecon: Life after Capitalism."In The Butterfly Prison, Tamara Pearson does a fascinating job of injecting political statements into a story about very likeable human beings, victims of social injustice. She is especially effective in her colorful use of words to provide vivid descriptions. "- Steve Ellner, author and editor of a range of non-fiction books, including Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Polarization and the Chávez Phenomenon

Who's gotten cheesed off this time?Millionaire Milton is about as pleasant as a moldy block of feta, but when his juicy young wife drops dead at the Whine & Cheese Bistro, Amalia finds herself back in the thick of things. Matters are further complicated by one very handsome paramedic. Will Amalia have a new love interest? And why is Nora back with the acidic Mr. Leonardo, Amalia's arch enemy?Drugs, mafia, escort agencies and a brown and yellow Mr. Kis as Amalia's unexpected sidekick?! She's "grateful" for his help, but things are getting "whey" too strange. As the sleuthing continues, Amalia finds herself in a poisonous setting, and wonders if the wrong person was killed.Will this unlikely duo get stomped on like a bunch of grapes, or flourish like a fine wine?

As a retired Professor of Literature, George Hodge knows that if life were art, his story would be over. He has outlived his wife, his children and finally his money. With little more than his wits, his thumb, and a resignation to serendipity, Hodge sets out on a journey of discovery. Along the way he acquires two travelling companions, a single mother and her precocious daughter who have reasons of their own for hitting the road. For three damaged individuals between the ages of ten and seventy-eight, the line between the American Dream and the American Nightmare is a delicate thread not easily seen until it breaks, and the difference between a tragic end and a new beginning is sometimes seen only in hindsight.

Whoever said it's important to follow your dreams was right.Jobless, without a penny left in his pocket, stuck in a little room rented above a garage, and faced with another rejection letter, Les has all but given up hope of working as an editor in a publishing company. But then one night he has a dream.Who are the Gleamers and the Glooms, why are they at war with each other, and what do they want with Les? When a Gleamer befriends him, Les embarks on an epic journey to help his new companions. Along the way he is inspired to contemplate his own dilemma-will he continue to pursue his dream, or give up and be consumed by his own darkness?Fans of magical realism will enjoy this adventurous, humorous, and deceptively cerebral novella about the importance of following one's dreams.

The Singing Bones recounts the life and times of eighteenth century polymath and explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller, the first European naturalist to visit Alaska.The first to propose that America was originally peopled by migrants from Siberia, Steller was aboard the packet boat St. Peter commanded by Vitus Bering on the Second Great Northern Expedition sponsored by the Russian Admiralty to determine if Asia and North America were connected by land or separated by a sea. When the St. Peter was wrecked on Bering Island in what was later named the Bering Sea, Steller cured the survivors, who were marooned and dying of scurvy, while making remarkable discoveries in natural history. He was first to describe the behavior and biology of the northern fur seal and Steller's sea lion, and his descriptions of the whale-sized Steller's sea cow and spectacled cormorant (both now extinct) are all we know about these exquisite creatures as living beings.The castaways eventually built a small vessel from the St. Peter's wreckage and sailed back to Kamchatka in autumn 1742, where Steller continued his explorations, in part while living with the indigenous Itelmen people.A blend of narrative adventure and biography, this historical first-person novel chronicles the professional visions and conflicted life of a deeply fascinating, flawed, and courageous man who devoted everything to advancing the frontiers of science and improving the lives of the native Siberians.

The story concludes in Book Three of the Bar Jonah Trilogy.Considered an expert in the area of psychopathic behavior, Dr. Espy has interviewed more than 30 serial murderers throughout the world including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and Eddie Gein. But when he was assigned to be the lead evaluator for Montana State Prison inmate Nathaneal Bar Jonah, an already once convicted serial child molester and attempted murderer in Massachusetts, Espy encountered a parasitic personality beyond imagination: a modern-day Cronos, the Greek mythological figure who devoured his children. Weighing over 375 pounds, Bar Jonah worked as a short order cook at Hardee's, carried a stun gun, impersonated police officers, told masterful lies, wrote unbreakable codes, cooked and shared with friends strange-tasting chili and spaghetti sauces, and was thought by Montana State detectives to have murdered and cannibalized at least one victim, 10-year-old Zach Ramsay.Culled from hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with Bar Jonah, dozens of others who either knew or were involved with him, Montana State investigators and prosecutors, and Zach Ramsay's mother, Espy retells Bar Jonah's entire life-from the time before he was conceived to after his death-and those who were harmed by him in unparalleled detail and scope.

The story continues in Book Two of the Bar Jonah Trilogy.Considered an expert in the area of psychopathic behavior, Dr. Espy has interviewed more than 30 serial murderers throughout the world including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and Eddie Gein.But when he was assigned to be the lead evaluator for Montana State Prison inmate Nathaneal Bar Jonah, an already once convicted serial child molester and attempted murderer in Massachusetts, Espy encountered a parasitic personality beyond imagination: a modern-day Cronos, the Greek mythological figure who devoured his children. Weighing over 375 pounds, Bar Jonah worked as a short order cook at Hardee's, carried a stun gun, impersonated police officers, told masterful lies, wrote unbreakable codes, cooked and shared with friends strange-tasting chili and spaghetti sauces, and was thought by Montana State detectives to have murdered and cannibalized at least one victim, 10-year-old Zach Ramsay.Culled from hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with Bar Jonah, dozens of others who either knew or were involved with him, Montana State investigators and prosecutors, and Zach Ramsay's mother, Espy retells Bar Jonah's entire life-from the time before he was conceived to after his death-and those who were harmed by him in unparalleled detail and scope.