On July 8 Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, took the stage at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. He was there to deliver a special message to the old Republican coalition—the libertarians, neocons, and establishment types who remain skeptical of Donald Trump’s GOP. Conservatives, he told them, face a left that […]
Original source: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2024/09/22/what-the-new-right-wants/
The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead. Join in weekly, bi-weekly or for a monthly wrap up. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme
It was a warm week, and I welcomed it. I visited some blogs, listen to audiobooks and finished one book. I need to spend the weekend writing up reviews as my busy season for work kicks in. Is it just me or has September flown by? I feel like we hit August and have been moving at warp speed towards 2025. Stay Caffeinated.
A special thanks to Harper Collins, Libro.fm, author Julie Embleton & Berkley Publishing
12th Annual Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon. November 21st to December 2nd, 2024. Sign up Challenge Hosts Needed. Please email me if you are interested in hosting one of the challenges.
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Original source: https://caffeinatedbookreviewer.com/2024/09/sunday-post-646-2025-coming-in-fast.html
For the Love of God: A Tapestry of History and Heritage in Los Altos de Jalisco, Mexico, crafts a rich narrative that honors the region’s heritage while tracing its people’s lineage. Why was this an important book for you to write?
This book was significant because it allowed me to fulfill my father’s lifelong dream of documenting the rich history of Los Altos de Jalisco. My father dedicated himself to tracing the lineage, customs, and heritage of our people, which shaped not only our family’s identity but also the collective memory of the region. He was unable to complete it during his lifetime, and continuing this project became my mission. It represents a tribute to the land, the people, and the legacy we inherit, ensuring that future generations understand where they come from.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Several key ideas shaped this book. First, the preservation of cultural memory was paramount. I wanted to ensure that the lineage, the stories of our ancestors, and the history of the region remained alive. The book captures the bravery, the trials, and the faith of the people of Los Altos, demonstrating their resilience in the face of external pressures—from colonization to revolutions. The essence of community and the importance of maintaining tradition are central themes that reflect how these values helped the people of Los Altos endure and thrive. It also explores how faith, particularly devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe, served as both a cultural and spiritual anchor for the community.
What is one thing that people point out after reading your book that surprises you?
What often surprises readers is the depth of personal sacrifice and the untold stories of individual resilience that shaped the region’s history. Many are unaware of the profound struggles that families endured to protect their land, faith, and heritage. People are also moved by the parallels between past and present, realizing that the challenges faced by previous generations continue to resonate with issues of identity and survival today. Additionally, readers are struck by the rich historical detail and the emotional connection the book fosters with their own ancestry, especially those with ties to the region.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from For the Love of God?
I hope readers take away a sense of pride in their heritage and a deeper understanding of the importance of preserving history. It’s a reminder that our ancestors’ stories, sacrifices, and triumphs are not just distant memories but part of our living identity. I want them to feel connected to the broader narrative of Mexican history and the unique role that regions like Los Altos de Jalisco played in shaping the country’s cultural landscape. Ultimately, I hope the book inspires a renewed commitment to passing down these stories and values to future generations, ensuring that the legacy of our people endures.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Website | Facebook | Amazon
In the heart of Mexico, nestled within the elevated landscapes of Los Altos de Jalisco, lies a story woven from the threads of history and personal reminiscence. “For the Love of God,” co-authored by Liborio Gutierrez Martin del Campo and Jose Gutierrez Gonzalez, is a profound exploration of a region rich in heritage and natural beauty, and a man’s journey through the early chapters of his life.
Liborio Gutiérrez, born in the humble but significant town of Capilla de Guadalupe, unveils his life story against the backdrop of the grand narrative of colonial Mexico. From the innocence of his early years to the threshold of his sixteenth year, his tale is interlaced with profound insights, cherished memories, and heartfelt dedications, especially to his son José, the guiding light of this literary journey.
This book delves into the historical colonization of the author’s ancestors in the mountainous area of Los Altos de Jalisco, painting a vivid picture of the region’s Castilian descent and cultural roots. It brings to life the traditions and legacies of the land, as well as the natural wonders and mysteries of places like Cerro Gordo, an inactive volcano with a storied past.
From the creation of water reservoirs to meet the community’s needs, to the intriguing disappearance of water from El Tajo, the narrative is as much about the land as it is about the people who shaped and were shaped by it.
Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2024/09/22/the-essence-of-community/
Enemies Domestic follows a woman on her first day as the White House Press Secretary who is confronted by a reporter with an agenda about whether or not she is planning to have an abortion, placing her career and life in danger. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I got the idea for Enemies Domestic when Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s decision leaked overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing a woman’s right to have an abortion. My protagonist, Lark Chadwick, was pregnant, but ambivalent about becoming a single parent. I wanted to show what it might be like to have an unwanted pregnancy in a post-Roe era.
Lark Chadwick is a woman with strength. What do you think makes her a valuable and worthy heroine?
Like all of us, Lark is an imperfect person. She has shortcomings and weaknesses. Her struggle to overcome her anger issues and impulsiveness is put to the supreme test in Enemies Domestic. What makes Lark a valuable and worthy heroine is her willingness to face and fight her personal demons.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I feel that choice is the ultimate theme in Enemies Domestic. Lark is forced to make the excruciatingly personal choice of abort-or-not-to-abort in a highly toxic and polarized political fishbowl–much like what we, as a country, are currently experiencing. Lark’s decision is complicated and nuanced. And it’s happening at a time when a dictator becomes president. That theme of choice is being played out in real time as this country is about to choose between Democracy and Authoritarianism.
What is the next book that you are working on and when can your fans expect it to be out?
I’ve begun making preliminary notes on the next book in the Lark Chadwick series, but it’s too soon to get into specifics other than to say the story will pick up where Enemies Domestic left off. I’m also working on a memoir (Working Title: Pivot Points: Plot Twists on the Path to Personal Integrity.) I’m hoping the memoir will be published in 2025, but the next novel might take a while longer.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Enemies Domestic, Book Six in the Lark Chadwick Mystery series: On her first day as White House Press Secretary, Lark Chadwick is confronted on live television by a reporter with an agenda: “Are you, or are you not, planning to abort your unborn child?” His question puts Lark in the crosshairs of extremists on both sides of the highly fraught abortion issue. Ambivalent about becoming a single mother in the post-Roe era, and grieving the death of her boyfriend, Lark is now forced to make her abort-or-not-to-abort decision in a highly toxic, politicized, and polarized fishbowl. At stake: her sanity—and her life. In the political thriller Enemies Domestic, his most important and controversial book to date, former CNN editor John DeDakis dramatically and thoughtfully tackles the hot topics of abortion, QAnon, White Christian Nationalism, and mental illness at a time when America itself is teetering between democracy and authoritarianism.
Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2024/09/22/toxic-and-polarized-political-fishbowl/
Paradise Undone is a powerful and deeply unsettling exploration of one of the most tragic events in modern history, the Jonestown massacre. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
In 2004, I gave a reading at the U. of N. Dakota Writers Conference to a crowd of 600, where I was a master teacher in residence. In the story, about the intersection of 9/11 and a Jewish family I knew back in New York, the parents go to a deprogrammer in an attempt to rescue their daughters (based on two friends) from a nameless cult in the Southwest. The programmer tells them he lost his daughter in Jonestown four years earlier. That was the sole mention of Jonestown in the story excerpt, which went on to win some prizes and be published in Sequestrum and Glimmer Train .
Afterward, a friend came up to me in tears, telling me of his colleagues who had lost family — siblings and nephew — in Jonestown. A powerful and unexpected response to my story. A month later, preparing for my sabbatical, in which I planned to write Hippie Ruins, a novel about the communes in Southern Colorado where I would spend the year ahead, I perused the shelves at Powell’s City of Books in Portland, OR, passing from COMMUNES to CULTS, where I discovered dozens of books about Jonestown. Thus, my bookstore aisle epiphany: remembering my friend in tears, I decided to write my book about Jonestown instead. The hippies could wait, while the story of an unscrupulous charismatic man leading altruistic souls to their demise felt urgent. Twenty years later, in this election year, my book just published, that urgency pulses with even greater danger.
Did you find anything in your research of this story that surprised you?
When I began researching, the most basic facts concerning the deaths at Jonestown — about which I knew little, like most Americans alive in 1978, when I was 18 — stunned me. The dead were 2/3 female, 80% African American, and 1/3 of those 900+ bodies were children. The media of the day, and even now, present those dead human beings as brainless, drugged-out zombies, led by a crazy man to “drink the Kool-Aid,” a salacious and sensationalized portrait so misleading. The dead of Peoples Temple were families, a third of them elderly, and the group as a whole comprising idiosyncratic individuals. It was not a mass suicide; it was murder, an example of coercive control gone ballistic.
What was one of the hardest parts of Paradise Undone for you to write?
I chose to narrate Nov. 18, 1978, from the first-person perspective of Marceline Baldwin Jones, Jim Jones’s wife of nearly 30 years, a founding member of the altruistic work of Peoples Temple in 1950s Indianapolis, who witnessed its decline in Jonestown’s final years, as her husband became an addict and monomaniac. The only fact we know about her demise that day is that she was one of the 900+ who died from poison. Two people died of gunshot wounds: Jim Jones and his nurse, Annie Moore. I wanted to give her a voice, a will, and a longing to stand up to her husband. However, she is human and weak and does not prevail. Living inside her consciousness for hours while the poison is dished out by others in cups and syringes in varying doses measured for infants, toddlers and adults, resonated with pain. She loves these hundreds of people who call her Mother. But there are armed guards surrounding her, guarding the vat of Flavor-Aid (not, in fact, Kool-Aid), and the crowd rises up against the one woman, Christine Miller, who argues with Jones not to go forward with his plan of so-called “Revolutionary Suicide.” Paralyzed with fear, Marceline does not act.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
My next book will be linking short stories about other members of Peoples Temple, including characters I wanted to write about in my novel but could not include due to narrative constraints. I plan to have it published on the 50th anniversary of the massacre in 2028. However, PARADISE UNDONE was ready for the 30th anniversary in 2008, with a NY agent who tried his best but, despite two close calls, returned it to me. Fifteen years later, despite hundreds and hundreds of rejections, in addition to being a finalist 17 times in various contests, I finally found a UK publisher, by chance, who eagerly snapped it up. Am hoping for a pub date closer to my goal this time around, with fewer years on my biological clock remaining!
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Instagram | Threads | Amazon
Imagine a community full of rainbow families where everyone comes together in the spirit of equality and fraternal love.
Shy pastor’s daughter Marceline and her new husband Jim Jones found Peoples Temple in the face of rampant hostility and aggression in 1950s segregated AmeriKKKa.
They give hope to the poor, the miserable, the alienated and disenfranchised of all colors, and build a commune in the jungle of British Guyana.
But this Eden too has its serpent. One who is also jealous of God, and where he goes, everyone must follow, even to the grave.
Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2024/09/22/the-deaths-at-jonestown/
Growing Up, Patty, by Patty Beecham, is one of the most candid and heartfelt memoirs I’ve encountered in a long time, and I found myself captivated by every page. From her earliest school days, Patty felt out of place—longing to fit in yet always sensing she was different. Her twenties were a turbulent time, marked by a troubled marriage, unemployment, and no stable home. Despite these challenges, Patty’s resilience shines through as she gradually pieces together the life she wanted, proving her unwavering dedication to creating her own path.
Throughout the memoir, readers are taken on a vivid journey through her friendships, romantic relationships, family struggles, career transitions, and a deep passion for adventure. Her experiences with failed relationships are laid bare, and one revelation—that she had once been stalked—left me genuinely surprised. Eventually, she meets Chris, the love of her life, and together they build a family. The challenges of motherhood were not easy for Patty, but with Chris’s steadfast support, she overcame the hardships. Her career, which began in advertising, later evolved into a successful role as a radio presenter. I admired her boldness in starting fresh, never hesitating to reinvent herself. Her courage and determination left a lasting impression.
One of the qualities that stood out most about Patty is her incredible resourcefulness. I recall her initiative in setting up one of the first school websites on the Internet, a moment that filled me with pride for her accomplishments. The way she navigated the joys and pains of motherhood, including heartbreaking miscarriages, was deeply moving. The strain her marriage endured due to her husband’s demanding job underscores the broader theme of how work can ripple through every part of a person’s life, affecting health, relationships, and emotional well-being.
Amid life’s toughest challenges, Patty’s humor became her shield, allowing her to find light even in dark moments. Her stories brim with wit and wisdom, and I found myself relating to many of her experiences—whether it was the quest for purpose, the restless ambitions of young adulthood, or the bravery it takes to pivot careers when life demands it. Growing Up, Patty is not just a memoir; it’s an honest reflection on the highs and lows of life, filled with moments of vulnerability, strength, and humor. It’s a deeply personal narrative, and I loved every moment of it.
Pages: 350 | ISBN : 978-0645247855
Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2024/09/22/growing-up-patty/
Nurse Florence: Tell Me About the Lymphatic System., by Michael Dow, is an engaging, educational book that introduces children to the intricacies of the lymphatic system. In the story, Jean, Condi, and Sonia seek answers from Nurse Florence, who guides them through the vital role the lymphatic system plays in keeping our bodies healthy. Through simple explanations and vibrant illustrations, readers learn about lymph nodes, the spleen, the thymus, and more. The book presents the function of these organs in a way that’s both informative and easy to understand, making it ideal for young readers curious about how their bodies work.
Nurse Florence explains how the immune system works using language that is clear and relatable, ensuring young readers grasp the concepts without feeling overwhelmed. When describing lymph nodes as “battle stations” where immune cells fight off infections, the book provides an illustration that enhances understanding. This visual approach not only aids comprehension but also keeps kids engaged, making the learning process both fun and effective.
Dow’s writing is direct and appropriate for its target audience, though at times it leans on simplicity, which may feel a bit basic for older readers. That said, this straightforwardness is a strength for younger audiences or those unfamiliar with the topic. One moment that stood out to me was when Nurse Florence explained how T cells mature in the thymus—this is a great example of how the book balances teaching scientific terms while keeping the tone light and approachable. The illustrations further elevate the text, giving kids a clearer picture of what’s being discussed.
The book encourages practical learning by tying the information back to everyday habits. Nurse Florence ends the lesson by promoting healthy practices like eating well and exercising, making the science feel actionable. This seamless connection between biology and real life can inspire kids to think about their own health, making the book both educational and motivating.
Nurse Florence: Tell Me About the Lymphatic System. is a well-crafted, engaging read that’s perfect for elementary-aged kids eager to learn about how their bodies function. The combination of easy-to-follow explanations and detailed illustrations makes it a great resource for parents, educators, or anyone wanting to introduce scientific concepts to children. If you’re looking for an educational yet entertaining book to spark your child’s interest in health and science, this is a fantastic choice.
Pages: 70 | ISBN : 978-1304762221
Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2024/09/22/nurse-florence-tell-me-about-the-lymphatic-system/