Best eBook Reviews
High quality reviews of the latest Kindle Books, Nook Books, eBooks and Print Books.
Saturday, April 2, 2016
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Erika Hayasaki delivers a masterful rendering of a tragedy in America's corn country
Erika Hayasaki |
DROWNED BY CORN
Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS
Monday, December 22, 2014
French writer Patrick Modiano wins the Nobel Prize for Literature
Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
New author J.R. McLeay pens a clever and enthralling tale of the future
Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Frank DeMarco boldly goes where no mind has gone before
Frank DeMarco |
Focus 27 is a place of pure mind -- that is, a cabin in the woods is not made up of physical lumber and nails -- but a construct of the mind. Think of the way you might have a dream about a visit to a cabin in the mountains. While you are in the dream, the cabin would seem as real and solid as anything else. When you wake up, you would tell yourself: "Well, that wasn't a real cabin. It was all being created by my dream mind!" The structures of Focus 27 apparently are a kind of group-mind creations of structures -- buildings, parks, gathering places -- which are collective construct by those who have passed on.
Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Sasquatch is not only real, but a "psychic" and a "person"
He says so-called "Bigfoot hunters" who seek the mythical beast with guns and tracking dogs will never find their quarry. Sasquatch, he says, is in control of the situation -- using psychic awareness, this beast, which is not a beast but "a person" has a nature that it is almost unimaginable to most people today.
See KEN KORCZAK'S review of "The Psychic Sasquatch and the UFO Connection" HERE
To find this book online: SASQUATCH
See also: JACK LAPSERITIS
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Friday, August 8, 2014
Cold Trap by Jon Waskan is thought provoking hard science fiction wrapped in a vexing murder mystery
Among the most difficult feats in literature is to write hard science fiction that is also exciting and entertaining. I’m delighted to report that author JON WASKAN has pulled off that difficult deed here with his first novel. This is not only terrific sci-fi, but weaved within this tale of an international moon base is a murder mystery -- it’s a who-done-it that will keep you guessing ‘till the end.
Jon Waskan |
Friday, August 1, 2014
Reading the Enemy's Mind by Paul H. Smith will both amaze with insight and provide a comprehensive perspective about remote viewing
I've read only about a half-dozen book about Remote Viewing, but I'm willing to bet that this one, READING THE ENEMY'S MIND by Paul H. Smith, is the definitive book on the topic.
Clocking in at more than 600 pages, Paul Smith slogs through just about every aspect of remote viewing -- from the mind boggling to the mundane -- from the first days of it's development through its eventual demise as a sanctioned government project.
Smith was a U.S. Army Intelligence Officer and among the original remote viewers. Here he doggedly documents the endless and banal bureaucratic twists and turns of managing a super secretive, highly classified intelligence operation -- but, wow! -- it was a spy game unlike any other in the already dark and spooky underworld of international espionage.
Most readers eager for sensational stories of extraordinary paranormal happenings will find themselves enduring some eye-glazing moments as Smith plods through all the crushingly boring -- the red tape, the funding methods, the inter-governmental squabbling. However, those who wade through it will be rewarded with a greater perspective about what really happened inside our government's unlikely foray into "psychic spying."
But there is much to amaze as well. There's lots of juicy paranormal stuff -- psychic powers, UFO tangents, channeling strange entities, spoon bending -- that will satisfy the inquiring mind.
It would take pages to provide a truly comprehensive review of everything Smith covers in this book, so let me focus on one area where I think the author provides invaluable insight into a deeply controversial topic.
The insight I am talking about is the window inside Smith gives us on certain people who emerged as high profile public remote viewers after the official program ended -- especially Ed Dames and David Morehouse.
Paul H. Smith |
Smith levels his biggest criticism at David Morehouse, whom he describes as a barely involved, minimally trained slacker who was, if not actually AWOL, absent for much of the time when he was supposed to be on duty working RV sessions. Morehouse also had periods of mental instability, a disastrous illicit affair, was once suicidal -- none of which was precipitated by the strangeness of remote viewing -- although Morehouse sought to us RV as an excuse for his behavior when he was facing court marshal.
Yet Morehouse is active today as a "celebrity" remote viewer, promoting himself as an original "PSYCHIC WARRIOR" (That's the title of his book). He also peddles a RV study course, he leads remote viewing seminars and is popular on the lecture tour. But Smith paints Morehouse as little more than a failure at remote viewing, a fraud and a blatant, self-serving opportunist.
But the guy who really sucks up all the oxygen in the world of remote viewing today is former U.S. Army Major ED DAMES.
Smith is somewhat kinder to Dames in terms of his work ethic and commitment to military intelligence. Smith even gives him high marks for his professionalism as a soldier. However, when it came to performing the actual remote viewing sessions, Dames was rarely the one sitting in the psychic spying seat. Rather, Dames served more often as a monitor and facilitator for other remote viewers. His own ability to remote view were unremarkable, and he barely worked more than a hlf dozen official RV sessions himself.
Smith writes that Dames also frequently thwarted protocol by improperly "front loading" remote viewing sessions -- that is, Dames frequently attempted to "lead" or bias remote viewers with his own unstoppable obsession with UFOs and his own pet theories about extraterrestrials.
When Dames could not goad disciplined remote viewers into coughing up questionable information about ETs, he would go ahead and conduct his own sessions with sloppy protocols, which would, not surprisingly, confirm his own belief system about aliens from other worlds.
Even worse, Dames displayed an extreme proclivity for apocalyptic scenarios. Again and again, Dames came up with end-of-the-world predictions both during his time with military intelligence, and for years after as a public figure -- and he continues to do today. Dames has appeared dozens of times on the hugely popular Coast to Coast radio program hosted by Art Bell, and over the years had made one disaster-scenario prediction after another, none of which have ever come true.
Smith also sharply criticizes Ed Dames for the claims he has made about his involvement with the development of the remote viewing program -- in short, Smith says that many of Dames' claims about what he did and to help develop the military remote viewer program are flat out false. Dames was a far more marginal player than he has long advertised himself to be, according to Smith.
So this is an outstanding book which is an invaluable historical document that both dispels the many myths that still linger about remote viewing, and which provides incredible insight -- a clarifying window into one of the strangest times in the history of U.S. espionage and intelligence operations.
Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer and worked for two years as an AmeriCorps volunteer on problems of poverty and homelessness. Ken taught writing at the University of North Dakota for give years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS
Friday, July 25, 2014
Free ebook about channeling ghosts and spirits is a remarkable look into what mediums were finding out about the afterlife 150 years ago
Mediumship, spirit writings and the séance were becoming all the rage by the late 1860s and perhaps would peak in England and America around end of the 19th Century. After, say, 1910, the fascination with hard science began to gain steam, and before long, science fiction magazines were emerging, displacing that sense of wonder one filled by the spiritualists and occultists.
But in 1869 a klatch of free-thinking transcendentalists gathered somewhere in America -- and apparently they had access to one incredibly talented medium. The result is this remarkable document, "Strange Visitors."
Download the free ebook here: Strange Visitors
It's a collection of "original papers" which are the messages channeled from the dead, but not just any of the dearly departed. This ambitious project goes for the cream of the crop. They seek contact with luminaries from the world of science and literature, philosophy and government, art and poetry, and more.
Such VIP Dead as Lord Byron, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Napoleon Bonaparte, Edgar Allen Poe and William Thackeray are contacted and queried for their impressions of what it is like to die and what the `The Other Side' is like.
Also, people who were famous at the time, but more or less forgotten today, are tapped for after-death reports.
For example, there is a session with Lady Blessington, who was born to poverty in late 18th Century Ireland as Margaret Power. She suffered through a bad marriage to a drunken sea captain (which ended with his death in debtor's prison), until she finally married into the aristocracy, landing Charles Gardiner, the 1st Earl of Blessington. Upon her elevation into high society, Lady Blessington became something of a celebrated literary figure across Europe and among elite, over-educated Americans.
But who is Henry J. Horn, the editor of this document?
I've done considerable sleuthing, and the best candidate might be a lawyer who spent most of his life here in my native Minnesota. Today, the "Horn House" at 50 Irvine Park in St. Paul is a prominent landmark listed with the Minnesota Historical Society. Born in Philadelphia in 1821, Henry J. Horn passed the bar in Pennsylvania and moved to the Twin Cities area in 1855. He purchased the Horn House in 1881. The home was built by Dr. Jacob Stewart in 1874 and designed by the German-American architect August Gauger. Henry J. Horn died in 1902.
Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any connection between Mr. Horn and spiritualist groups, mediums and séances -- but is it likely that a high-profile, respected Minnesota attorney would lend his name to such an arcane publication? It's a mystery.
An even bigger mystery is the identity of the medium himself/herself. Who was this remarkable person who contacted these disincarnate souls, and via "automatic writing," produced reports an array of richly divergent writings (and poetry)from beyond the veil?
What's even more amazing is that these manuscripts are much more than musings about the Afterlife -- for example, an entire Gothic novel is presented, purportedly written by the ghost of Charlotte Brontë herself!
There are also political ravings by Napoleon -- clearly still a megalomaniac-imperialist in the hereafter. A dirge by Edgar Allen Poe reveals that he remains a bleak, dreary, haunted poet despite having cast off the agony of the flesh!
The examples of Napoleon, Brontë and Poe might lead one to believe that these missives are not so much after-death communications, but rather, impressions of a creative medium with a literary bent -- except that the majority of these works read like "authentic" contact with the dead.
Here's what I mean:
In recent decades an interest in mediumship has experienced a resurgence. It all goes hand-in-hand with the rise of all things "New Age," but interest in the idea that "no one truly dies" has also received a boost from medical types, such as Dr. Raymond Moody and his groundbreaking book "Life After Life," and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross with "On Death and Dying."
Others have since have gone much further with talking-to-the-dead kinds of books -- consider the likes of psychologist Michael Newton and psychiatrist Brian Weiss who use hypnotic regression to document volumes of intense information from people's past lives, but also from deceased loved ones.
Then there's a whole string of folks from all walks of like who are either channeling the dead or reporting intense experiences in the Afterlife --books I've read recently (some reviewed here) along these lines include those by Natalie Sudman, Erika Hayasaki, Julia Assante., Dr. Eben Alexander, Dr. Allan Botkin, Bill Guggenheim, Dr. Don Miguel Ruiz -- and many more --
-- and the point is, the descriptions and communications these folks report about the after-death environment are remarkably similar the writings presented in "Strange Visitors" -- which suggests that there is a certain authenticity to these works.
So this obscure gem published in 1869 is of great significance and interest.
Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer and AmeriCorps volunteer in which he worked with poor and homeless people. He also taught writing at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: THE MAN IN THE NOTHING CHAMBER
Monday, June 9, 2014
Freaksome Tales by William Rosencrans is an unrelentingly brilliant send-up of H.P. Lovecraft -- funny as hell and dripping with dark irony
Here's my theory about this book: The author sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for extraordinary literary talent. But he also had to agree to write like a person afflicted with a diseased mind. Finally, his satanic bargain allowed for a generous portion of humor, as long at that humor was black as pitch.
Not only are these short stories remarkably well-written, but the entire collection is packaged or couched in a meta-premise that is unrelentingly hilarious -- the premise is that the author is a certain fictional fellow by the name of V.V. Swigferd Gloume, a sort of British version of H.P. Lovecraft.
Like the real Lovecraft, the fictional Swiggy Gloume lives a dreary, dismal existence of self-absorbed alienation, bizarre neurotic fears, loathing of others, loathing in general and loneliness. He is obsessed with monsters, death, slimes and filth. His plight is a chronic inability to get his work consistently published in mainstream periodicals -- only to achieve notoriety after his death.
William Rosencrans |
And pity the poor saps that Gloume must elaborately bamboozle into publishing his work. Running a piece by Gloume is the kiss of death, either for the obscure publication or even the poor editor himself.
Author WILLIAM ROSENCRANS trots out this gag again and again -- and it's funny every time!
Rosencrans also has taken great pains to keep his parody running to the Nth degree. He provides fictional pictures of Gloume, his family and childhood home, and also an appendix which creates additional insight into the character of the nonexistent author through his correspondences, poetry and more.
But it's the short stories themselves that make this book an astonishingly dark and demented delight.
If you are a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, then you'll love these works; if you are not a fan of H.P Lovecraft, then you're in luck -- that's because Rosencrans does Lovecraft while improving Lovecraft in all those ways he could and should have been improved -- with more plots that are complete and resolve at the end, by adding humor, irony and charm (yes, charm), and by daring to stray beyond Lovecraftian style whenever a story needs its own flavor.
As I read, for example, I found myself thinking, "Wow, this story really has the seasoning of a G. K. Chesterton!" or "This one has a smack of Ray Bradbury!" or "This Rosencrans fellow writes like he's the reincarnation of Horace Walpole!"
Best of all, William Rosencrans writes like William Rosencrans, obviously an author of singular and unique talent, even while he's sending up Lovecraft or anyone else.
So FREAKSOME TALES is a marvelous book. It gets my top recommendation, and will easily land in the "Top 5" spot of my 100 Best Books of 2014, and I say that with confidence even though it's only June.
Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA
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Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Too many timeworn plot gimmicks and cookie cutter characters makes Artificial Absolutes by Mary Fan a work of bland artificiality
ARTIFICIAL ABSOLUTES is a book with a fairly intricate, well-developed story line buried under a gigantic mountain of cliché plot gimmicks that renders what might have been a decent book into a dreary mass of almost insufferable blandness.
The work often also devolves into mawkish dialogue so drippy with smarmy goo, it's on par with a weepy love ballad written by, say, the Jonas Brothers, for tweenie fan girls.
To prove that I am not delusional or just being a mean reviewer, I will invite the reader to join me now by logging onto a favorite search engine and look up something like, "The 10 most common cliché movies scenes" -- because many appear in this book.
The first cliché is one we all know and you probably won't even have to Google it (although please feel free to do) is that the best way to escape from the cops, or the bad guys, or anyone chasing you with guns is to squeeze into the ventilation duct work of a large building.
Time and again, movie heroes (and criminals) cleverly slip away from their pursuers by getting into the duct vents because they know that the clueless authorities or bad guys will be 100% perplexed and always fooled by this never-before-thought-of escape plan.
Artificial Absolutes includes this scene -- and for good measure, it also presents the first cousin of the Great Air Duct Escape Plan -- the dreaded -- Escape Through the Opening at the Top of a Stalled Elevator Car Plan -- and an oh-so-hackneyed climb up the cables of the elevator shaft to baffle one's pursuers.
The next cliché plot gimmick that fills dozens of pages of this book is the:
"The bad guys can shoot at you all they want and they can never hit you, but the good guy can shoot back and score a hit on the bad guy almost at will."
We have all seen it hundreds of times -- Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris -- they run around bristling with machine guns while being pursued by dozens of other guys with even more machine guns -- but no one can hit the good guy! Yet, the hero can score a dead-middle-of-the-torso-shot while jumping, rolling and firing.
In Artificial Absolutes we are inflicted with page after page of the same. The first such scene features a sophisticated, high tech robot which chases our heroine Jane "Pony" Colt through the hallways of a building -- the robot shoots and shoots and shoots but it can't hit the broadside of a barn!
The conveniently inept robo-killer suffers dozens of near misses -- right next to her shoulder! a real grazer just missing her head! a blast that splinters the door frame she just runs through! -- it's not the least bit exciting because we all know the scene -- we've seen it hundreds of times in movies.
One would think that a super-advanced robot constructed in an advanced society that has mastered interstellar space travel would include some kind of sophisticated target acquisition and tracking hardware to easily laser down it's prey -- like our drones can do today. But not in this book.
Even when "Pony" and her brother, Devin Colt, are being chased by a squad of heavily armed, battle-trained starship troopers, all they have to is run, dodge, zig-zag -- and they become completely unhittable targets! Robotic drones flying through the air at the same time can't nail them either!
And yet, whenever Devin Colt chooses to whirl, shoot wildly from the hip while on the run with a borrowed gun -- he can expertly knock the weapons right out of the hands of the bumbling, can't-hit-nothin' interstellar marines! And do it again and again!
Suffice it to say: Heroes who can run through a torrential hail of bullets without getting hit, while at the same time being able to shoot anyone they want -- is among the used and abused of movie clichés -- and the fact it has been transferred to the pages of a book does not make it any less of a hack.
For good measure, and to really slather it on, the book includes what has become one of the most universally used, overused and annoying visual gimmicks of all time -- it's ye olde:
"The hero blows something up, but turns his back and walks away not bothering to look at the massive fireball erupting being him."
Here's the scene right from the book at location 5561 on my Kindle:
MARY FAN |
Speaking of moth-eaten plots, the very central plot element, the heart of Artificial Absolutes, is an worn-to-baldness retread premise that has already been explored by hundreds if not thousands of other science fiction writers, beginning in the 1920s.
SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!
Just a few months ago I was wading through the free pulp science fiction of Project Gutenberg and selected to read the 1961, MEMORY OF MARS by Raymond F. Jones. In it, the hero falls in love with his childhood sweetheart. They meet in the third grade. They have a long courtship through high school, they fall madly in love and they get married. Later -- GAK! -- he finds out she was never real in the first place! She's a robot!
In Artificial Absolutes, Devin Colt meets a beautiful woman, they date, the fall in love and he asks her to marry her. Later -- GAK! -- he finds out she was never real in the first place, She's a robot!
His sister, you know "Pony Colt," meets a handsome young man (boy). He rubs her the wrong way at first because he is a simplistic religious gasbag, yet they keep seeing each other, they go through some stuff together, they fall in love, she has finally found her soul-mate. Later -- GAK!-- she finds out he was never real in the first place! He's a robot!
It just keeps happening!
But even by 1961, falling in love with lifelike robots was already far from original -- dozens of others had already written a spin on the same plot element. In the mid-1960s Philip K. Dick practically built a career around stories in which perfect replicants of human beings pose questions of what is real and what is not real, and whether a robot can possess true consciousness or not have true consciousness.
END SPOILER ALERT!
Certainly, these are standard saws of science fiction, so we can't take points away from author MARY FAN for trotting out this threadbare SF rag doll one more time -- it's a fan favorite after all -- but we certainly can't give extra credit for originality either.
There are many other elements of hackneyed plot devices and cliché gimmicks, but I simply can't get them all (er ... cough, cough ... Travan Float is a thin re-imagining of Mos Eisley of Star Wars ... ) without making for too lengthy a review, and I want to make a final comment:
Young writers today -- those of Generation X, Generation Y and Millennial extraction -- have all been raised in on TV and movies like no generations before. They have also been embedded in the online world since they were babies. They have endured total immersion in on-the-screen fictional scenarios.
Thus, what I am seeing from one young writer after another today (I read more than 100 books per year) are plots and scenes in books that are soaked in movie and television clichés. Even the minor characters are not original creations -- very often plucked right out of a TV or a movie.
For example, in this book Commander Jihan Vega would seem to be almost an exact duplicate of ADMIRAL HELENA CAIN of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Again, I challenge the reader to find a scene featuring Admiral Helena Cain on `Battlestar' and compare her to Commander Jihan Vega of this book -- they are near Kinkos of the same fictional person -- different in name only.
Sure, in a sense, most books are at least somewhat derivative of other works and leverage broad themes, archetypes and conventions of their genre, but Artificial Absolutes takes the copy-and-paste lifting of other standardized memes to such an extreme degree, the result is a literary work of Absolute Artificiality.
Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA
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Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Natalie Sudman's "Application of Impossible Things" is a different kind of near death experience book
After getting blown up by a roadside bomb in Iraq, civilian contract worker NATALIE SUDMAN "blinked" and found herself in another reality. It was a strange place indeed. Sudman discovered herself standing center stage in what she struggles to describe as perhaps a vast stadium filled with thousands of beings -- but who or what kind of beings?
Souls? Personalities? Entities? Spirits? People?
None of the terms seemed quite adequate or accurate. Sudman realized that she was having a near death experience (NDE) after suffering severe trauma to her body. But this event didn't have any of the classic attributes popularly associated with the NDE.
There was no tunnel of light, no greeting on "the other side" by dead relatives, no experience of a spirit detaching and flying away from her physical body. She just "blinked" and she was there. Once arrived, she felt instantly at home and did not want to go back.
She also became immediately aware of her first function in the afterlife: She acted as a kind of cosmic computer cache with the purpose of "downloading" all of her "stored" information to the waiting gathering of souls -- who absorbed the information "with gratitude."
NATALIE SUDMAN |
This is not airy fairy New Agey fare but more of a thinking man's (in this case, a thinking woman's) report on the afterlife. Sudman is at once a serious, sober observer of the extraordinary situation she encountered, but also an often funny and charming writer with something entirely different to say.
This is a book about the ultimate issues of all reality -- What is life? Who are we? What are we? What is the meaning of life? What does it mean to be a conscious human being? Why are we here? -- and Sudman has a truly remarkable ability to delve into these weighty questions while never talking down to us, and at the same time, challenging us to expand our way of thinking.
This is a slim volume at just over 100 pages, but it has the effect of reading a book of 200 or 300 pages. Each paragraph seems impregnated with richer meaning, as if there is information coming at you from the spaces in between the words and sentences. If you read it twice, don't be surprised is if you get as much more even more out of it the second time around.
It's perhaps important to note that Sudman was not a New Age type or any sort of formal spiritual seeker before she was encountered a roadside bomb on Nov. 24, 2007. She was an archaeologist by profession, and then had transitioned to working as a project engineer for a civilian contractor in the Basrah South Region Office in Iraq. She was managing the building of a health care center at Khor Az Aubair at the time of the incident that transformed her life.
She comes to the NDE subject as an outsider with a fresh perspective, and so perhaps without the baggage of those who spend their lives immersed in mystical esoterica -- and yet, many can expect to have their old and calcified belief systems rattled by what Sudman suggests here.
Open-minded skeptics only need apply.
Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA
All NEW: KEN'S BOOK REVIEW SITE ON FACEBOOK: REMOTE BOOK REVIEWING
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Free history ebook takes you down a remarkable Ohio River journey
Lyman C. Draper was a driven historian who was determined that certain events of American history should never be forgotten. The result of his lifetime's work are a number of fascinating manuscripts like this one, Narrative of a Journey Down the Ohio and Mississippi in 1789-90.
This account records the experiences of Maj. Samuel S. Forman who was a member of a large party that traveled the length of the Ohio River in crudely constructed barges. Included with the party were more than 100 black slaves.
Born in 1765, Forman was a young man in his early twenties at the time of his Ohio River adventure. His company navigated to the Mississippi where they sailed south to establish a plantation in Natchez. Natchez is located in the present-day state of Mississippi, which was still a holding of Spain at the time. Spain would relinquish the territory about a year later.
The source of the Ohio River is in Pennsylvania and flows westward through West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana before flowing into the Mississippi in Illinois.
At the time of Forman's journey in 1789, the territories along the river were home to a marvelously rich collection of native American peoples, forts and the various scattered outposts of Europeans settlers. It was wild and dangerous country loaded abundant wildlife and colorful characters.
For the history buff this rare manuscript is a treasure, not just for its overall narrative, but for those incidental historic asides which jump out at you like nuggets washed from a stream. For example:
* We learn that the first First Lady, Martha Washington, was a chunky woman. Major Forman was lucky to be near at hand at the the second inauguration of George Washington and he notes that Mrs. Washington looked "pretty fleshy."
* The city of Cincinnati owes it establishment to a love infatuation. A certain Ensign Francis Luce was charged with establishing a block house at a site called North Bend, but he caught site of a "beautiful black-eyed lady" who was the wife of a settler. The husband found it necessary to move from North Bend to remove his wife from the strenuous advances of Ensign Luce -- and the location they moved to became Cincinnati.
Reading this evinces a tremendous sense of sadness for me. That's because today the Ohio is the most polluted river in America. It was once a vital artery of life for the Native Americans. The river was the lifeblood of their rich and imaginative culture, as well as a source-mother for abundant wildlife.
The journey of Samuel Forman was the beginning of another kind of bleak journey -- toward the devastation of the native population, and the toxic environmental degradation of what was once one of the most life-giving bodies of water in the world.
Not anymore.
Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA
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Thursday, March 13, 2014
Spiritual Lucid Dreaming by Samira Nuriyeva is a well written introduction for the novice dream explorer
This short manual introducing the concept of lucid dreaming to a new audience is well written in a clear and "lucid" style. It delivers a broad overview on how to lucid dream, while also thoroughly grounding the reader in a framework based on the Hindu tradition of Vedanta.
That's no small accomplishment considering that this is just 60-some pages, but the author handles the task well. As a person who has been exploring lucid dreaming for some 30 years, I can find little fault with the approach taken here.
However, let me say that I don't think lucid dreaming must necessarily be considered from the perspective of Vedanta only -- if you want, you can achieve the lucid dream state, practice it and gain its insights without the baggage of any religious or philosophical system, including Vedanta.
This is not to imply that Vedanta is "baggage" in a negative way; I think anyone who chooses to immerse themselves in this ancient tradition would only benefit from doing so, and find great personal growth.
But take, for example, the purely secular and scientific approaches to lucid dreaming, such as that exemplified by the work of the psychophysiologist STEPHEN LABERGE PH.D. It was LaBerge who reintroduced the concept of lucid dreaming to a modern audience with his books LUCID DREAMING and EXPLORIING THE WORLD OF LUCID DREAMING.
LaBerge made lucid dreaming palatable to a western, rational-materialistic audience by scientifically proving the reality of the lucid dream state with innovative and repeatable experiments using EEG readouts and monitoring the eye movements of REM sleep -- it established beyond a reasonable doubt that the fundamentals of what ancient adepts of Vedanta had been telling us for untold centuries is accurate.
The point is, millions of people learned to lucid dream and gain all of its benefits with LaBerge's purely secular approach -- on the other hand, adopting the methods grounded in Vedanta as explained in this short manual by SAMIRA NURIYEVA will be of equal benefit, and perhaps in many ways, will lead to an even richer understanding of what is implied by lucid dreaming.
So this brief, well-written introduction to lucid dreaming gets my best recommendation.
Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA
All NEW: KEN'S BOOK REVIEW SITE ON FACEBOOK: REMOTE BOOK REVIEWING