Editorial Reviews for Nominees
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 Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)
What a morbidly fascinating subject matter. And what a well-researched book concerning it! Why Rampage Killers Emerge: Conditions and Characteristics is a serious, research-heavy criminology/psychology book arguing that sudden public mass violence is usually not a spontaneous “snap,” nor the product of one easy explanation such as video games, psychiatric medication, bullying, or mental illness alone. Funk calls the offenders he studies “autogenic” rampage killers: largely lone attackers whose violence is public, compressed in time, aimed mostly at arbitrary victims, not motivated by financial gain, and not primarily a tactical act for an organized ideological cause. The book’s central framework has four broad preconditions: perceived physical inadequacy; destructive or oppressive environments; neuropsychological impairments; and pathological personality traits. Funk repeatedly emphasizes that these are not causes or excuses. They are vulnerabilities or developmental conditions that may combine with grievance, isolation, distorted thinking, resentment, fantasy, and personal choices over time. The book uses case histories, perpetrator writings, biographies, research studies, and a purposive appendix sample of 112 offenders to argue that the overlap among these conditions matters more than any one factor by itself. The book’s biggest strength is that it refuses simplistic scapegoats. It does not blame violent media, SSRIs, mental illness, bullying, bad parents, guns, or ideology by themselves. That is a genuinely important corrective. Funk is most persuasive when he shows how isolation, grievance, perceived humiliation, distorted beliefs, access to weapons, personality dysfunction, and a growing revenge fantasy can feed one another. It is also impressively thorough. The amount of case material is enormous, and the author does more than summarize headlines. He looks at journals, recordings, court statements, warning signs, personal histories, and repeated behavioral patterns. The appendices, notes, tables, and figures make it clear that this was a major research undertaking rather than a casual true-crime book. Actually, the tone of this book is surprisingly unbiased and measured, especially given the emotionally charged subject matter. In fact—you know what?—it's quite detached. It doesn't sound like the author has a motive. It doesn't sound like the author wants to glamorize the violence or put a spotlight on the killer(s). Instead, it really feels like the author is just presenting matter-of-fact information as is. That's quite impressive. Funk does not sensationalize these perpetrators, turn them into dark celebrities, or use their crimes as an excuse to push one simplistic political, cultural, or ideological narrative. He is careful to distinguish explanation from excuse and to remind readers that the overwhelming majority of people who struggle with trauma, depression, social isolation, disability, bullying, family instability, or psychiatric disorders never become violent. That restraint gives the book real credibility. Rather than insisting that one troubled childhood, one medication, one video game, one gun, one rejection, or one diagnosis explains everything, Funk consistently returns to convergence: the dangerous accumulation of grievance, entitlement, distorted cognition, social withdrawal, emotional deterioration, violent fantasy, and, in some cases, access to the means to carry out an attack. It is a far less convenient answer, but it is probably much closer to the truth. When a horrifying act of public mass violence occurs, people understandably want one clear answer. It was the video games. It was the medication. It was bullying. It was bad parenting. It was mental illness. It was ideology. It was guns. It was social media. It was society. And, to be fair, every one of those things may sometimes be part of a larger conversation. But one of the greatest strengths of Why Rampage Killers Emerge: Conditions and Characteristics is that it refuses to pretend that an atrocity can be explained away with one neat, politically convenient, emotionally satisfying answer. This book runs through numerous examples of mass murderers throughout history. It explores these examples in exhaustive detail. You know what? We're really tempted to just not mention these killers by name. In our minds, they're horrible, terrible, despicable people who did horrible, terrible, despicable things. They robbed people of their happy endings. They robbed people of their lives. They robbed families of their loved ones. They traumatized neighborhoods and communities. Let' challenge ourselves to do that. But let's talk vaguely about some of the examples from the book without mentioning names. One example involves an academically accomplished professional who appeared to spend years accumulating personal and professional grievances. Setbacks were not processed as disappointments, frustrations, or unfair moments that could be survived. Instead, they seemed to become proof that other people were conspiring to deny this person the recognition, status, and treatment they believed they deserved. Funk traces a long pattern of explosive reactions, entitlement, interpersonal conflict, and blame that existed well before the eventual act of violence. The point is not that professional rejection “caused” murder. The point is that rejection became another brick in a wall of grievance that this person had been building for years. Another case involves a young person whose life contained a frightening convergence of troubling behavior, social withdrawal, family dysfunction, violent interests, alarming communications, and access to a weapon. This may be one of the book’s most heartbreaking examples because it does not feel like a story in which absolutely nobody could have seen anything coming. It feels like a story in which warning signs accumulated, adults missed opportunities to intervene, and a dangerous internal world was allowed to keep developing in the shadows. Elsewhere, the book explores two deeply troubled young men whose friendship became a destructive feedback loop. One appears more calculating, controlling, and energized by deception. The other appears more depressed, isolated, and emotionally lost. Together, however, they helped build each other into something worse. They reinforced rage, fantasy, alienation, and revenge until those things became more real to them than the human beings around them. Funk does not treat this as a dark buddy story or some kind of twisted legend. He treats it as a warning about manipulation, secrecy, and what can happen when damaged people begin validating each other’s worst impulses. There is also the example of a young man whose loneliness, envy, romantic frustration, and grandiose sense of entitlement hardened into a belief that other people owed him affection, admiration, sex, and validation. That distinction is crucial. The book does not blame loneliness itself, nor does it blame the people who rejected him. It shows how a person can take personal pain, refuse accountability, turn disappointment into resentment, turn resentment into hatred, and eventually convince himself that innocent people deserve punishment for not giving him the life he imagined he was entitled to have. And then there are the cases involving people whose lives seemed to be unraveling through isolation, instability, perceived failure, paranoia, substance abuse, family strain, employment problems, or untreated psychological distress. Again, the book never argues that people experiencing these hardships are destined to become violent. Most never do. But Dr. Funk shows how, in certain individuals, these factors can combine with pathological personality traits, violent fantasy, grievance collecting, and a willingness to blame everyone else for their misery. That may be the most haunting thing about this book. It does not present these atrocities as random lightning strikes out of a clear blue sky. It presents them as terrible storms that can gather over time. Not every storm becomes a tragedy. Not every warning sign means someone is dangerous. Not every lonely, depressed, bullied, rejected, traumatized, socially awkward, mentally ill, or angry person will ever hurt another human being. But when warning signs begin to overlap with obsession, entitlement, escalating threats, violent fantasies, manipulation, secrecy, access to weapons, and an increasingly hostile worldview, we cannot simply shrug and assume it is nothing. We do not need to make these people famous to learn from the devastation they caused. We do not need to repeat their names, celebrate their notoriety, or treat them as fascinating antiheroes. The victims deserve more of our attention than the people who took so much from them. But we do need to understand the patterns. Because understanding the patterns may help us recognize danger before another family loses someone they love. We also learned a few things we didn't realize after years and years of reading about these mass-death/mass-shooter stories. For example, we didn't realize how led along and submissive one of the Columbine shooters was. We were under the impression that it was an equal partnership in a death pact. Perhaps the part of this book that interested us the most were the defenses that mass-killers sometimes use to try to play the courts. This book does a surprisingly good job at running down the realities of the insanity defense and what it means to be incompetent to stand trial. There's actually a pretty big difference. And the author, thankfully, highlights how rare and unsuccessful these usually are. The book also covers topics like BPD, paranoia, narcissism, antisocial tendencies, obsessive behavior, delusions, dissociation, depression, and other pathological or neuropsychological conditions. But, once again, one of the book’s strongest qualities is that it does not treat any diagnosis as a crystal ball. Now, with all that said, this book is naturally going to be incredibly upsetting to some people. The details, even presented factually and unglamorously, are still grim, shocking, tragic, and sad. There is one example that upset us a lot personally, and that is the example of the grocery-store shooter who became obsessed with Ember’s Ghost Squad, a fictional animated world. If you know, you know. We're not going to name this murderous piece of crap. Anyway, what bothered us about this section is that the killer, who is biologically male—cis male—is constantly referred to by female pronouns. Under most circumstances, we'd be cool, respectful, and accepting of that. However, this individual is not trans. This individual was sick, deranged, mentally ill, confused, and out of touch with reality. To refer to him by female pronouns seems wrong and disingenuous. It gives all trans people a black eye because it puts this piece of crap--this murderous fraud--this fake--in the same category as genuinely trans people, who AREN'T violent, murderous, or deranged like this individual was. We'd say the same thing about the 2007 Connecticut home invasion killer who Wikipedia lists by a chosen female name and female pronouns. Yeah, we push back against that. So, this guy had a choice? You know who didn't have a choice? The innocent woman he strangled to death. The two innocent daughters he and his accomplice poured gasoline over and burned alive-- two innocent girls whose lives and innocence they took. These pieces of crap--this grocery store killer and this Connecticut home invasion killer--are not trans; they are frauds who suffered from gender dysphoria and mental illness. They are fakes. And we don't validate fakes. We don't give credibility to fakes. True trans and queer people do not act like this. They don't harm people. They aren't dangerous. They aren't murderers. In fact, most of them are some of the kindest, most generous and gentle souls out there. Ok, that's something we needed to get off our chest. The research in this book is exceptional. Check it out on Amazon!
1 Comment
 Score: 90/100 (9.0 out of 10)
The End: Alpha is a Christian dystopian/post-apocalyptic resistance novel set in 2113, after a catastrophic virus, political collapse, and the rise of Constantine Jedidiah Goodfellow, now known as Emperor Nero. Nero is a narcissistic trillionaire technocrat who has seemingly deluded himself (and most of the world) into believing that he is the Antichrist (with a capital A) and ruler of the world. He has turned the world against Christians, branding them through a fake “virus scan” census and hunting them with robotic killing machines called Guardians and aerial units called AirGuard. The story opens with Sage, a young Christian survivor, living in hiding with other “undesirables” in a bombed-out church shelter in Maple Park, Illinois. What's with all these apocalyptic books and the need for them to take place in Illinois? Are you guys ok in Illinois? Anyway... Hopefully this isn't so sacrilegious to say, but this book made us think: what if prophecies of this sort don't unfold because of magical, divine, or supernatural means, but because of a human drive toward self-fulfilling prophecies? What if they come true via rational, realistic, grounded means? What if we just love digging our own graves and lying in them by propagating these prophecies? What if some texts plant a seed of mania that psychopaths and sociopaths then go overboard with? We actually see glimpses of this on the streets of major American cities every day: the crazy homeless guy shouting at the top of his lungs that the devil made him do stuff and/or that the end is nigh. That's just a thought. Do you know what's strange? This book actually made us think a lot about Shakespeare's Macbeth--which is a much better story with a much better protagonist and villain, don't get us wrong (even the author probably wouldn't deny that)—however, it similarly explores the idea of self-fulfilling prophecies. Macbeth was led to believe he would become king, then that he was invincible, unkillable, and that he would reign for decades to come because of the vague yet seemingly optimistic prophecies of the three witches. However, all of those prophecies were only true from a certain point of view. Most notably, Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane because Malcolm ordered parts of the trees to be cut and carried to disguise their numbers, and Macduff proved to be "not of woman born" because he was birthed through a C-section. Macbeth followed and fulfilled all of these prophecies, and, arguably, he had never learned of them from the three witches, he might've never attempted to fulfill them. He would've never written to Lady Macbeth about their promises. He would've never done any of the killing. Arguably. Likewise, this book really made us wonder if Goodfellow would've ever become Nero if he wasn't made aware of the prophecies of the Antichrist. Anyway, onto the other characters in the book. Sage is the emotional heart of the book. He is young, angry, traumatized, faithful, jealous, brave, and deeply wounded. He has lost his adoptive family, lives with a glowing Christian mark on his neck, and survives with his best friend Hunter, his love interest Charlie, and their leader/mentor Swifty. Sage’s chapters carry the survival-thriller side of the book: hiding, fleeing, fighting Guardians, losing friends, finding new shelters, and wrestling with whether faith means endurance, forgiveness, revenge, or action. Thomas Drexler is the military/strategic backbone of the story. He helped create Nero’s Guardian technology before defecting and becoming a key figure in The Defiance. He is a wanted traitor in Nero’s eyes, but also one of the few people capable of fighting Nero’s system from the inside. His chapters reveal the broader war, the hacking/backdoor angle, the resistance network, and eventually the huge truth that he is Sage’s biological father. Maximillian, later revealed as Darius Antone Forrester, is one of the most interesting parts of the book. He begins as Nero’s grotesquely loyal worshipper, a “High Vassal” who adores Nero with cult-like devotion. His chapters are disgusting, flamboyant, creepy, and intentionally excessive. But over time, a “still, small voice” begins working on him. His storyline becomes a conversion/awakening arc, ending with him rejecting Nero, wounding him, realizing the “god-king” can bleed, escaping in an AirGuard Epsilon, and reclaiming his real name. The main plot follows Sage’s group as they move from shelter to shelter after suspected informants expose them. They flee the church, survive close encounters with Guardians, lose people like Sister Theresa, Leona, Fritz, and Luca, and eventually reach a larger Christian refuge at a high school. That refuge feels like hope for a moment, but Nero’s forces attack, flooding the mechanical room and scattering or killing many of the survivors. Now, while that might sound tense and action-packed, a lot of this book is actually more static and philosophical. A lot the characters stand and sit around thinking about and discussing things including the possibility that Nero is a flawed human—a sinner—just like them who they should be praying for as Christ commanded we pray for our enemies. We found that very interesting, because we don't remember a time in Left Behind, Christ Clone Trilogy, or any other piece of apocalyptic literature in which someone actually encouraged Christians to pray for the Antichrist. Usually, they pray for a meteorite to hit his helicopter or something like that. Now, we have to say: something seems a little off with this book. It feels really clunky, blocky, and choppy. It feels like each character and each scenario exists in a box. It almost feels like this whole book is happening on a small stage in a theater with some kids dressed like trees in the background while some actors feed and fan a guy dressed like Kuzco from The Emperor's New Groove. Nero just comes across as extremely cartoonish, almost unbelievably so. And the problem with that is it prompts the question: why would anyone follow this guy? Believe this guy? Do what this guy says? Yes, there are times when he's supposed to be trying to draw false sympathy and trying to manipulate the crowd into siding with him and blaming Christians, but it just feels really inauthentic and disingenuous. Yes, people are stupid, but are they really that stupid? We didn't find Nero to be very charismatic or convincing at all. In fact, we found him to be more sniveling and annoying. Most of the time, Nero just seems to lounge around and get catered to and fawned over. We compared him to the guy from Emperor's New Groove, but he also kinda reminded us of the pompous Space Emperor from the "Space Emperor" SNL skit, you know the skit in which the royal snack guy, Shegan, keeps feeding him "delicious delights" just so the emperor can show off how powerful and in control he is. Maximillian kinda reminded us of Shegan, the snack guy. We couldn't shake that thought the whole time. With Nero, it was hard for us to imagine a handsome charismatic political leader who people were willing to follow. He came across as a pompous younger guy with a higher pitched voice, crazy hair sticking up like a Super Saiyan or Cats from Zero Wing, and wild clothing like Seymour from Final Fantasy X. No, that's not how his appearance is described in the book, but that's how we imagined him with the way he acts, the way he's viewed and treated in this world, and just the tone of this book in general. Maybe it's just that this book has a really futuristic, sci-fi vibe to it. This book has a pretty heavy Christian leaning, which we didn't mind. In fact, we kinda liked it. We'd even dare say it was probably the best aspect of this book. It's interesting to read about how Christians might think and act in the end days when they're being persecuted. Would they run and hide? Lie about their faith? Or would they stay steadfast and proclaim the name of Jesus even if it meant certain death? Check it out on Amazon! Review of “Entrepreneur Secrets: Real Stories of Purpose, Profit, and Power” by Peter Remington6/30/2026  Score: 96/100 (9.6 out of 10)
Entrepreneur Secrets by Peter Remington (with 24 contributing business leaders) is an excellent business and personal growth/development book! While practical, it also has a great motivational/inspirational lean. We couldn't help but be fired up by it! The book’s heart is clear right away: entrepreneurs are framed as risk-takers, builders, mentors, job creators, and community leaders. The foreword argues that entrepreneurship is not just about business ownership, but about creating meaning, helping employees and families, serving communities, and building legacies. There is also a strong charitable angle, since the book says all proceeds go to Kids’ Meals, a Houston charity feeding preschool children. The book moves through many industries: real estate, public policy, restaurants, architecture, insurance, fashion, wellness, nonprofit leadership, art, emergency medical services, accounting, beauty, coaching, and more. Each chapter is basically a personal testimony mixed with practical advice. Bill Baldwin’s chapter focuses on real estate, local expertise, relationships, realistic expectations, niche-building, and community involvement. His “five things every entrepreneur should know” section is one of the most concrete business-advice sections in the book, especially his warning to assume sales may be half of what you expect and expenses may be double. Matt Brice’s chapter about opening Federal American Grill’s Hedwig Village location right as COVID hit is one of the strongest narrative chapters because it has an actual crisis, a pivot, community support, leadership under pressure, and a clear example of survival through adaptation. Beth Harp’s Kids’ Meals chapter gives the book some of its deepest purpose, showing nonprofit entrepreneurship as mission-driven leadership rather than just fundraising or operations. A lot of the later chapters continue that same pattern: reinvention, survival, and purpose. Gretchen Gilliam’s chapter about The Hive uses the beehive metaphor well, showing entrepreneurship as collaboration and community-building. Saba Syed’s chapter about Oasis Moroccan Bath is another standout because it combines personal rebuilding, cultural identity, motherhood, faith, and the risk of introducing an unfamiliar wellness concept to Houston. Peter Remington’s closing chapter turns “S.W.I.N.G.E.R.” into a motivational framework about success, work ethic, integrity, growth, enthusiasm, and resilience. This is a warm, generous, highly inspirational business book. Its biggest strength is that it makes entrepreneurship feel human. These are not cold case studies about revenue models and market positioning. They are stories about people being knocked down, starting over, learning from mistakes, helping others, building teams, and trying to leave something meaningful behind. The best chapters are the ones that give specific stories and specific business lessons. Matt Brice, Bill Baldwin, Beth Harp, Gretchen Gilliam, Saba Syed, and Taft McWhorter stand out because their chapters feel grounded in lived experience. You can see the business, the risk, the pivot, and the emotional stakes. The weaker side is that the book can become repetitive. Many chapters return to similar ideas: believe in yourself, follow your purpose, keep going, build relationships, serve others, and do not quit. Those are good messages, but across 237 pages, some readers may want more hard numbers, sharper conflict, more operational detail, or more “here is exactly what went wrong and how I fixed it” material. One of our favorite aspects of this book is the excellent writing combined with how deeply human and personal these contributions are. There are some great quotes and passages. For example: "Growth doesn’t end; it evolves." "Life has a way of getting better." "Whether you’re 25 or 65, there’s no expiration date on a dream." "...necessity is the mother of all transformation." “Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.” "Your mindset in the morning can determine your day, and your mindset at night can determine your dreams." “Knowledge isn’t just power; it’s preparation.” Need a kick in the butt and a boost of motivation? Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)
Life and How to Live It- Volume One: Begin the Begin is a brutally candid coming-of-age memoir by Chaz Holesworth, covering his life from his 1978 birth through a personal collapse at age seventeen in 1995. Despite the title, this is not a self-help book. It is the story of a kid trying to survive poverty, addiction, family instability, religious control, shame, grief, and the belief that he may never get out. Chaz grows up in Kensington, Philadelphia, with a father whose long-term heroin addiction devastates the household and a mother who, desperate for safety and meaning, embraces an extremely strict fundamentalist church. The family lives with severe neglect and deprivation, while Chaz also endures bullying, childhood boundary violations, fear, and a church-school environment that teaches him to distrust his own thoughts, emotions, interests, and identity. It should also be mentioned that this can be considered an LGBTQ+ memoir, if that's something that interests you. Music becomes his lifeline. R.E.M., Tori Amos, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, and the alternative-rock world give him a vocabulary for feelings that religion and family life have made him afraid to express. Discovering R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” is especially important because it begins to crack open the narrow world he has been given. The songs, records, concerts, friendships, and eventually romantic relationships become evidence that there may be another way to live. As a teenager, he starts working, gains access to music and friends, runs away from home, and eventually moves in with his grandmother. For a while, Bensalem Baptist Academy and his relationship with Laura offer a fragile hope that he can finish school, be loved, and build a future. But the school expels him, Laura’s parents force them apart, and he is pushed back toward the restrictive church-school system he had tried to escape. The book ends with another expulsion, a confrontation with his father, a serious emotional breakdown, and Chaz stepping into an uncertain secular life without the structure that had controlled him. This is actually the second book by Chaz Holesworth we've read. In fact, we read this series out of order (because that's the order they were submitted in). Gosh, we wish we would've read this one first! It provides a lot of context to what happened in book 2. It's also a bit more focused on the author's relationships with people, particularly family members and love interests, which we really enjoyed and appreciated. This is a powerful memoir because it feels lived-in rather than cleaned up for the reader’s comfort. Chaz does not present himself as a hero who always makes the right choice. He is funny, angry, insecure, romantic, immature, perceptive, and often painfully honest about his own mistakes. That makes the book feel human. The strongest part is how it shows that poverty, addiction, religious fear, inadequate education, family trauma, and mental health struggles do not exist separately. They pile on each other. His father is not reduced to a monster, and his mother is not reduced to a villain. Both clearly hurt him, but the book also makes it clear that both were damaged people trying, and often failing, to survive their own lives. Music is also much more than decoration here. R.E.M. is practically a character in the memoir. The album commentary occasionally slows the pacing, especially for readers who are not deeply invested in 1980s and 1990s alternative music, but it also explains how Chaz stayed alive emotionally. Music gives him language, community, rebellion, comfort, and a path toward becoming someone outside the identity imposed on him. Now, in the previous book (or the sequel, if we're getting technical), music, musicians, and bands absolutely dominated almost every aspect of Chaz's life. It always seemed to be on his mind, to an obsessive degree. In fact, a lot of the second book seemed overly fixated on music and a distaste for organized religion, particularly Christianity. However, what's great about this book is that it provides a ton of context to that. It also provides a bit of relief and an escape from all of that. We now have a better understanding of why the author viewed organized religion with so much disdain in the second book. He was severely mistreated, persecuted, manipulated, and filled with shame and guilt by the terrible religious people and institutions he encountered. There's actually a lot of irony in this book and the life of the author. Perhaps the biggest example of this is how his father suffered from a long-term heroin addiction and heavy alcohol use—things which society and organized religion generally view as negative. They are, indeed, negative. However, it's interesting and ironic how Chaz's father actually seems like the normal one (the normal parent) in the family. That’s because his mother’s obsessive religiosity became so all-consuming that it often made her appear less grounded than Chaz’s deeply addicted father. His father’s problems were obvious: heroin, alcohol, instability, absence, and poor decisions. But his mother’s damage came packaged as righteousness, protection, salvation, and “God’s will.” She became so consumed by the church’s teachings that normal childhood experiences, secular music, movies, friendships, dating, questioning, self-expression, and eventually Chaz’s own independence could all be treated as threats to his soul. Rather than helping him process fear, trauma, insecurity, or abuse, the religious environment often filled him with more shame, guilt, and terror about Hell. His father was dangerously flawed, but he could still offer Chaz moments of ordinary life, freedom, humor, music, movies, and connection. His mother, meanwhile, increasingly allowed doctrine and fear to shape nearly every part of her son’s world. That does not make Chaz’s father a good parent. It makes the situation even sadder. The parent society would most quickly condemn, the addicted father, could sometimes seem more normal than the parent who believed she was saving her child. Some of the moments Chaz has with his dad are some of the best in the book. His dad was the only member of the family who actually attended his pageant. He and his dad bonded over watching Star Wars together. After a severe medical emergency which leaves his father disoriented and unable to answer basic questions, his father is still able to say, "That's my son, Charlie" (the only question he got right). Look, many of us at OCA are Christian or come from an Abrahamic religious background. We're so sorry to the author for the terrible things that supposedly-religious people did to him. That's not the way Christians are supposed to be. That's not the way Christianity is supposed to work. The author actually does a good job pointing this out, alluding to how Jesus taught us to be loving and accepting—"Judge not, that ye be not judged." While the criticisms of religion in this book made us feel uncomfortable or were even upsetting to us, they still seem justified given the context of what Chaz experienced. We can't hold that against him. He has the right to say that a group of people were terrible to him, so he doesn't want to be like them (or one of them). Chaz also described rich moments with other people in his life like his sister, Cathy, the "queen of mean." Chaz refers to her as the "lightweight champion" of people who make drama in the household (his parents are the "heavyweights"). Aside from his complicated relationship with his father, some of Chaz’s most memorable and revealing connections are with the young women who enter his life. Tonya, Christine, Jeanne, Laura, Mary, and Sue each bring out a different side of him: the awkward romantic, the deeply insecure dreamer, the loyal friend, the sensitive music obsessive, and the teenager who wants love so badly that he can sometimes overwhelm himself with hope. Christine is especially interesting because their relationship does not settle into a simple romance. After a brief courtship, they become close friends who tease, argue, exchange gifts, explore Philadelphia, and help each other through difficult moments. Their bond becomes especially moving when Chaz stays beside Christine during her father’s final days, even singing “Hero” with her at his bedside. In many ways, Christine becomes less a girlfriend than a sister-like presence and one of the few people with whom Chaz can be emotionally open. Jeanne, the “Boardwalk Queen,” represents the rush of first serious love. Their Wildwood romance, long phone calls, mix tapes, and Chaz’s exhausting bus trip to Pearl River give the memoir some of its sweetest and most wistful material. Laura, meanwhile, becomes perhaps the book’s most developed romantic relationship. She seems to offer Chaz a real possibility of tenderness, mutual understanding, education, and a future beyond Kensington. Even their happiness is threatened by the controlling religious environment around them, which makes their relationship feel both hopeful and fragile. These relationships matter because they show that Chaz is not only reacting against pain. He is actively searching for connection, affection, and someone who might see value in him when he has spent most of his life being made to feel ashamed, unwanted, or trapped. Chaz also has some beautiful moments with random strangers. For example, during a concert, someone sprays mace into the crowd, causing Chaz great pain and partially blinding him. He finds comfort in a random female concertgoer to holds his face and reassures him that it will be ok. There's another irony we found with this book: clearly, music, concerts, and bands are an escape for the author from the more stressful things in his life. However, from a reader's perspective, the stressful things in his life, and the many relationships he has with family members and others, are an escape for us. There was another part of this book that really caught our attention: when Chaz was nearly scammed into entering his book into a poetry anthology. What's ironic is we think we know the anthology he was talking about. We think it was called something like "Stars in Our Hearts" and it required all entrants to be willing to buy it and tell their loved ones to buy it at an exorbitant price. Lastly, this book is strangely funny in a uniquely Chaz-ish way. For example, he says, "I swear to God, to Michael Stipe, I swear on my life and soul… " instead of just swearing to God like most people do. He says, “One of the groups of kids had a gang named WTO which meant Whites Take Over. Yet even with such a family-friendly name, they still chased two white kids from the other side of the El away.” We just found "with such a family-friendly name" to be such a snarky way of saying things. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 92/100 (9.2 out of 10)
Remember what Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans in 2005? Can you believe it has been over 20 years? Yet the memories of the horror still linger like it was just a few years ago. That's how deep this single event--this disaster--scarred us. The flooding. The destroyed homes. The collapsed infrastructure. The stranded civilians on rooftops. The desperation. The violence. The feeling that an entire major American city had suddenly become something unrecognizable. Now imagine that was only the beginning. Imagine that, beneath the floodwater, something massive had been awakened. Something ancient. Something armored. Something impervious to bullets. Something that seems unstoppable, unkillable. Imagine a massive prehistoric force that did not care about rescue efforts, government statements, criminal gangs, military patrols, or whether anyone believed it was real. All that it cared about was hunger and blood. Well, and maybe one other thing... That is the nightmare at the center of Jurassic Swamp by Ethan Richards! In Jurassic Swamp, Hurricane Elena transforms New Orleans into a flooded nightmare where the usual dangers of a natural disaster are already bad enough. The city is dealing with destruction, looters, armed criminals, ruined infrastructure, and terrified civilians. Then people start disappearing. Boats are overturned. Bodies are found torn apart. And a name begins to spread through the swamp like a warning nobody wants to believe: Rougarou. This is not simply a story about a big alligator. It is a military creature feature, disaster thriller, swamp-horror novel, and surprisingly heartfelt story about ordinary National Guard soldiers trying to adapt when the rules of reality stop making sense. Perry Martin, a hesitant reporter for the Atoka Sentinel, embeds with Oklahoma Army National Guard unit Aztec Company as it deploys for disaster relief and security. At first, Perry is an outsider who wants to observe rather than participate. Under the hard-but-fair mentorship of First Sergeant LeMay, however, he begins to understand the soldiers, their routines, and their sense of duty. Then the company encounters Rougarou. Small-arms fire barely affects it, and the monster kills Specialist Morrison while severely injuring others. Footage later confirms that the creature is far larger than any known alligator. Perry’s reporting becomes crucial because the military and civilians need someone willing to record the truth, even when the truth sounds impossible. The company traces clues to Lil’ Dwayne, a wealthy celebrity whose abandoned estate contains illegal exotic-animal holdings, secret laboratories, containment systems, and evidence of biological experimentation. Rougarou appears to be a resurrected or engineered Deinosuchus-like predator that escaped during the hurricane. The estate also contains a gigantic liger, which kills Sergeant First Class Falkenberg before it is brought down. Meanwhile, Louisiana official Cleo Fredericksburg tries to minimize the crisis, blame Aztec Company, and protect his own authority. He insists the danger was only a large nuisance alligator. But, c'mon, who's gonna buy that a 20 foot alligator did all of this? His cover-up collapses when Rougarou attacks his helicopter in spectacular fashion. Freed from political restraint, Captain Shawnee Smith leads Aztec Company to track the wounded creature back to its den beneath Lil’ Dwayne’s estate. This book actually has a lot going for it. First and foremost, it has a premise that seems grounded--ironically--despite the absurdity of a prehistoric monster terrorizing a city. So, it's not hard to buy into and understand. We already talked about how this scenario reminded us a lot of the real-life Hurricane Katrina catastrophe and subsequent crisis. Another thing that this book has going for it are the action scenes. The Rougarou's attack on the helicopter is one of the most satisfying moments in all of Richards's works. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. It's also so cool to see conventional weaponry go up against this monstrosity. They eventually have to step up their game and use heavier and heavier weapons. It's such a testosterone-filled thrill! We also loved that there are aspects of this book that actually seem genuinely human, which is nice to see in a book as wild and absurd as these tend to be. For example, it is interesting that many characters still refer to Rougarou as an “alligator” or "giant gator" even after it becomes obvious that it is something far larger, older, more dangerous, and much different from any crocodilian they've ever encountered. That might seem like a small thing, but it is actually one of the more human parts of the story. People need names for things. They need categories. In a way, the word “alligator” becomes a signifier: a label that gives people the illusion that they understand the danger in front of them. If Rougarou is just an alligator, then there is a familiar playbook. Call animal control. Stay out of the water. Bring bigger guns. But Rougarou is not just an alligator. It is larger, older, more armored, more intelligent, and far more destructive than the word can contain. The moment the soldiers and civilians realize that their label no longer fits the creature, they are forced to confront something much scarier: They may not be in control. That is part of what makes the monster effective. It does not just threaten their bodies. It breaks their understanding of the world around them. One of the bigger twists in this book is a little cliche for a monster/kaiju story these days, especially considering that it was also a twist in the awful 1998 American Godzilla movie and the much improved 2014 Gareth Edwards Godzilla movie. At the same time, it makes the Rougarou seem more like a real creature with biological drives and needs rather than a mindless monster. That's actually one of the things we loved the most about Terror in Big Bend, when it was revealed that the first monster actually had a partner/mate whom it mourned. This is a solid book in Richards's kaiju fiction collection. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 91+/100 (9.1+ out of 10)
Never before have we been so bored yet so impressed by a book at the same time. This book features some extraordinary passages and exceptional writing. It's extremely quotable. At the same time, there's just something that seemed... off. Maybe it was the pacing or the framing (or a combination of the two), but this book really seems to drag and meander. The North Doesn’t Speak is a long (600+ page), historical fiction novel set in the antebellum South, as the country moves toward Civil War. It opens with an enslaved man attempting to flee north, only to be caught, dragged back, and publicly branded as a warning to everyone else. That opening establishes the book’s central idea: slavery does not only control bodies. It controls language, memory, trust, movement, and even a person’s ability to imagine escape. The main story follows Elijah Boone, an enslaved blacksmith on Boone’s plantation, and Lila Carter, an enslaved young woman on the neighboring Carter plantation. They meet during a controlled gathering between the plantations and slowly form a connection through cautious conversation, shared intelligence, blue scraps of cloth, forged wire, hidden tools, and brief moments when they can recognize each other as human beings instead of property. Their growing trust is watched by Samuel, one of the novel’s most disturbing characters. Samuel is enslaved too, but he has learned to survive by gathering information, feeding rumors upward, and making himself useful to power. He spreads an apparently believable escape route involving reeds, a river bend, soft ground, and a weak fence. It is a trap. Caleb, a woman, and Isaiah’s cousin are captured and branded, while the plantation tightens patrols, adds bells to dogs, and turns fear into policy. Samuel is the most fascinating and interesting character in this book. He is an extraordinary antagonist/villain, especially since his antagonism/villainy doesn't come from being a slave owner, having weapons, or being politically powerful. Instead, he is dangerous because he understands the system around him and learns how to exploit its cracks. He watches. He listens. He collects secrets. He recognizes fear in other people and turns it into leverage. He is the perfect product of the system—a sick and broken system. Samuel becomes increasingly controlling toward Lila. He frames possession as protection: if she gives up Elijah, gives up escape, and accepts Samuel’s “help,” perhaps she can stay alive. When Elijah is captured after attempting to flee, Lila is forced to watch him suspended and beaten in a barn. Samuel tells her that Elijah can live if she stops resisting and places herself under his protection. Elijah, barely able to speak, tells her not to let Samuel take who she is “from the inside.” Lila refuses to give Samuel the clean yes or no he wants. Her refusal buys time. With help from an unexpected ally inside Carter’s house, she escapes and enters a real Underground Railroad-like network of hidden rooms, root cellars, barns, back roads, coded signs, strangers, and people who risk themselves without demanding gratitude or a full story. The novel wisely does not present that journey as magical rescue. The North is dangerous, uncertain, and emotionally cold. It does not promise Lila safety, reunite her with Elijah, or tell her whether she made the right choice. By the way, the concept of "the North" is presented in a unique way. The North isn’t a geographical location or a direction. It is more like a whispered possibility, a coded language of hope, and a refusal to accept the world as it is. For the enslaved characters, “north” represents the dangerous thought that another life might exist beyond the fences, the dogs, the brands, and the people who insist they have no choices. It is not a promise of easy freedom, either. The novel makes clear that the North may not answer, may not protect everyone, and may not even be fully knowable. But the existence of the word itself matters, because it gives people something to imagine, something to move toward, and something their oppressors cannot completely erase. Do you want to hear something strange? We don't usually read the descriptions of books before we read them. We challenge each book to be self-evident and self-explanatory through its writing, characters, and internal content. So, we went into this book intentionally blind to what we were getting into. When we read "the North," we had different ideas of what it might be. Heck, it might be Winterfell for all we knew. Or it could've been the North Pole. It could've been North Korea. Or North Vietnam. This could've been a book about surviving a journey through the perilous North Atlantic. Or the Arctic. Or it could've been a book about the North (Union/Federal portion of America) during the American Civil War, which was much closer to what it ended up being. One of our biggest criticisms with this book is the repetition. That has been an issue with all of the Clifton Wilcox books we've read so far. At the same time, it's nowhere near as repetitive as The Case Against Jasper and Echoes of the Forgotten. The prose of this book can be beautiful, but the novel returns again and again to the same language and imagery: silence, listening, shapes, systems, waiting, careful movements, pressure, eyes watching, and the North as an unanswered question. Those ideas are important, but after 600 pages, they are sometimes explained more often than needed. A tighter edit could probably remove a meaningful amount of repetition without losing the book’s atmosphere. The pacing is also patient to the point of occasionally feeling stalled. The first half spends a lot of time building tension, spreading rumors, watching Samuel observe people, and reinforcing how dangerous hope is. That atmosphere works, but the story would hit harder if more scenes advanced the plot or revealed new sides of Elijah, Lila, Mary, Ruth, Caleb, and the other people around them. In fact, the pacing of this book seems to suffer from how detailed, eloquent, and flowery the writing often is. You could even argue that the beautiful writing is actually distracting, leading to the plot seeming like it's stuck in a ditch. Perhaps that trapped feeling is what the author was going for, which kinda makes sense. It's just not fun to read. There are a lot of slow parts of this book that drag. The dialogue and descriptions are often where the the boots get stuck in the mud, and we just found ourselves periodically impressed by nice lines while also bored and bewildered at other times. It's a really strange feeling as a reader. It's like cognitive dissonance. We're impressed, but we're not enjoying this. It's like watching Olympic curling. Anyway, let's share some of our favorite quotes and passages from the book just for the heck of it (and to demonstrate how this book shined in that regard): “Silence could be shelter. Silence could also be a warning. The difference was not in the sound. It was in what you did with it.” “Freedom was a place where the chains were not always visible, where the hand reaching for you might wear a glove and speak softly, where the threat could arrive as a notice nailed to a wall or a question asked with a smile.” “The best trades were the ones no one else recognized as a trade until it was too late to refuse the price.” “Information had weight here. It could bend a man’s spine. It could loosen a ladle.” “In a world that branded hope into flesh, beginnings were not gentle things. They were sparks, and sparks were always being looked for.” “At the forge, heat had purpose. Heat shaped tools. Heat made metal honest. In the yard, heat was a language with only one message.” “Questions were hooks. You kept your skin away from them.” “Memory was dangerous. Memory made a thing last.” “Nobody spoke to him. Not because they didn’t care. Because care had to be hidden the way plans were hidden, deep enough that it didn’t show.” “If the plantation wanted everything to hold, then he would learn how to make things fail. Quietly. Cleanly. At the right moment.” "He understood that if there was a path north, it wouldn’t be a road you walked like a free man. It would be a series of small openings. A loose hinge. A latch that lifted. A nail that snapped at the right time. A tool hidden in plain sight. He understood, too, that the plantation’s power depended on things holding. Fences. Chains. Habits. Fear. So, he began to imagine the opposite, not as a dream but as a craft." "Fear was how most truths announced themselves here." "Trust didn’t shatter all at once. It thinned. It thinned the way rope did when it had been rubbed too many times against the same rough post. Still whole if you looked quick. Still holding, if you didn’t test it. But every day it held less, and every day it took less to snap." "They were building their own path out of scraps and seams. Samuel was building his out of people. And the thing about people, Samuel understood with a calm that felt like a sickness settling in, was that they were easier to shape than iron if you knew where they were already weak. All you had to do was listen. Then choose what to repeat, and what to keep." "Eyes like to land on the young ones. Easier to move them. Easier to sell them. Easier to make a lesson out of them." There are similes, metaphors, personification, symbolism, repetition, parallel structure, sensory imagery, foreshadowing, irony, and sharp aphoristic lines. Basically, every poetic and literary technique is on display here. It's easy to get lost in the beauty and wonder of all of it. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 93/100 (9.3 out of 10)
When it comes to Christian apologetics, it doesn’t get much better than this! Which god is GOD?: A Lawyer’s Look at God and Religion by Adrian J. Adams, Esq. is a bold, intelligent, deeply organized, and highly persuasive defense of Christian faith. It is the kind of book that does not merely ask readers to believe. It asks them to examine, question, compare, weigh the evidence, and then decide what they are going to do with the verdict. At its core, this book asks a question that is both ancient and urgently modern: if the world’s religions make conflicting claims about God, salvation, death, judgment, heaven, hell, reincarnation, morality, and the meaning of life, can they all be equally true? Adams’s answer is no. And then, like a seasoned attorney, he starts building his case. Imagine if the world’s religions were placed on the witness stand. What if Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, New Age spirituality, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, atheism, and agnosticism were not simply treated as private beliefs, cultural traditions, or personal preferences, but as competing truth claims that had to answer questions under cross-examination? The book begins with a simple but powerful premise: the world’s religions make conflicting claims, and conflicting claims cannot all be true in the same way at the same time. Some religions teach reincarnation. Others reject it. Some teach salvation through works, some through knowledge, some through devotion, some through submission, some through faith, and some deny a personal God altogether. Adams argues that if a religion claims to speak for God, then it should be able to identify the source of its spiritual knowledge and provide credible evidence for why that source should be trusted. That courtroom framing is one of the book's strongest and most interesting features. Now, to be fair, this concept isn't entirely unique. We actually encountered it fairly recently via Trust on Trial by G.S. Gerry, in which Christian concepts and Earnest Trust—a living personification of Christian faith—are put on trial in a courtroom setting. However, these are still two distinct books that essentially set out to accomplish the same thing(s). Adams's book is arguably more grounded and realistically, lacking the fictitious characters and hypothetical scenarios of Gerry's. At the same time, it's also less focused on being entertaining and more focused on truth-seeking and educating. This book is arguably even more didactic and heavy-handed than Gerry's, which can be a bit much for some, especially those who are secular, atheistic, agnostic, or from one of the many belief systems that aren't supported by the evidence and talking points the author presents. The book is divided into three major parts: 1. Does God Exist?, 2. Different Destinations, and 3. The Son of God? There's a very deliberate progression from cosmology and design, to comparative religion, to Jesus, prophecy, miracles, crucifixion, resurrection, and Pascal-style faith/reason arguments. In Part I, Adams argues that the universe itself points toward God. He discusses the beginning of the universe, entropy, fine-tuning, DNA, and design. His basic claim is that the universe is not random, eternal, or self-explaining. He argues that a created, ordered universe points more reasonably to a Creator than to chance. This section is written very confidently and sometimes aggressively, especially when discussing atheism. Perhaps the strongest aspect of Part I is the argument that the universe seems more purposeful than random, as if by design rather than via chaos. The author makes the argument that the chances of all these random things happening to create human beings, the Earth, and put them in the Goldilocks zone are astronomically low, making an intelligent creator/designer much more likely in contrast. One of the best quotes from this book is: "a house cannot build itself." A lot of the arguments in Part I are similar to those made by Governor James Martin's Revelation Through Science, another outstanding Christian apologetics book. In Part II, the book compares Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, New Age belief systems, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Adams focuses heavily on where each religion claims to get its spiritual knowledge, what each teaches about death/salvation, and whether its claims are historically or supernaturally authenticated. He concludes that Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, New Age, and Islamic writings do not offer the same level of verifiable historical evidence that he sees in Hebrew Scripture. He argues that the Bible’s historical detail and archaeological/historical support make it more credible as a source of spiritual truth. This is probably the section that's going to upset the most people, especially if Adams's arguments fail to support your religion or belief system, or if they come across as denigrating them. Even as Christians reading this book, there are times when the tone in which certain religions are described seems dismissive. The narrative does sound like it has, well, a narrative—i.e. a point/conclusion to make. It is hard not to feel some type of bias against certain religions and toward/in favor of others. You could argue that it is just the evidence leading Adams to his conclusions, and in many sections, that argument is persuasive. However, there are also moments when the language feels less like neutral examination and more like a prosecutor dismantling witnesses he already does not trust. This is especially noticeable in the sections on atheism, New Age spirituality, and some Eastern religions. Adams frequently presents atheistic explanations as evasions, impossibilities, or attempts to avoid God rather than as positions held by serious people who may have arrived there through sincere reasoning. Likewise, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Wicca, Aquarian spirituality, and Raelian beliefs are often examined through their weakest or strangest-sounding features, which can make those faith traditions seem easier to dismiss than deeply understand. And, to be fair, a lot of strange things happen in the Bible and Torah too. There is a talking snake, a burning bush that speaks to Moses, plagues in Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, manna falling from heaven, Balaam’s donkey speaking, Jonah surviving inside a great fish, water turning into wine, etc. Now, let's digress a bit. The author does eventually point to evidence like archaeology and things in the Bible that human beings at the time couldn't have known, like the structure of the ocean floor and the various health-related things. The book’s entire concept is built around legal scrutiny. Adams is not trying to write a gentle interfaith survey. He is cross-examining truth claims. From that perspective, the sharpness makes sense. A courtroom is not designed to make every witness feel equally affirmed. It is designed to test credibility, expose contradictions, and arrive at a verdict. In that sense, the book’s intensity is part of its identity. Still, this approach may be a strength for some readers and a barrier for others. Christian readers looking for a confident defense of the faith may find the tone refreshing, direct, and powerful. Readers from other religious backgrounds, or readers who are already skeptical of Christianity, may feel that the book is not always charitable enough toward the beliefs it critiques. Yet even with that criticism, the book remains highly effective. Its bias, if we want to call it that, does not come from laziness or lack of structure. It comes from conviction. Adams believes the evidence points somewhere specific, and he follows that evidence all the way to the God of the Bible and the person of Jesus Christ. The result is a book that may not always feel neutral, but almost always feels purposeful. In Part III, the book narrows sharply to Christianity. Adams argues that Jesus clearly claimed divine identity, that the Trinity is compatible with Jewish monotheism, that Jesus’ miracles validated his claims, that fulfilled prophecy points to him as the Messiah, and that the resurrection is the central evidence for Christianity. The sections on miracles and resurrection are among the most “lawyerly” parts of the book, because Adams discusses witnesses, hostile parties, cross-examination, statements against interest, and alternative explanations like theft of the body or hallucination. In our opinion, Part III was probably the most thought-provoking and fascinating of the sections in this book. It actually had us on our heels and considering if this book would have a twist finding. Maybe it'd end up supporting Judaism more than Christianity after all. That thought crossed our minds several times when beginning this section. Believe it or not, this book wasn't 100% clear that it was a Christian apologist book until about the middle of Part III when the evidence for Jesus seemed to be piling up. It actually read like it might be defending an Abrahamic/Judeo-Christian belief system in general. That might actually be part of the genius of this book. It at least provides the possibility—the plausible deniability—that the author isn't just trying to reach a forgone conclusion they already set their mind on (at the expense of all other alternate conclusions). We made a list of certain things that we found especially interesting or thought-provoking in this book. For example, the author points out that it's strange how some cults and religions hinge on the belief that an alien created aliens who then created aliens who then created us (humans). He made the argument that it's strange having a god who lives within a universe (like in most polytheistic religions) because it makes the god subject to that universe. Surprisingly, some of the best arguments the book makes are about the placebo effect. Adams acknowledges a fair skeptical possibility: maybe some of Jesus’ healings could be explained by belief, suggestion, or psychosomatic relief. In other words, maybe people believed Jesus could heal them so strongly that they experienced real improvement. That is a reasonable challenge to raise, and we appreciated that Adams did not simply ignore it. However, he then makes one of the book’s strongest points: the placebo effect cannot explain everything. It cannot explain raising the dead. It cannot explain someone being healed remotely when they did not even know Jesus was performing a miracle. It cannot explain physical conditions like blindness from birth, leprosy, paralysis, a withered hand, a long-term hemorrhage, or a severed ear. It cannot explain Jesus calming a storm, walking on water, feeding thousands, or turning water into wine. That section is really where Adams starts to cook. The argument is not just, “Jesus performed miracles, therefore Christianity is true.” It is more specific than that. Adams argues that Jesus performed the kinds of miracles that would be difficult to dismiss as emotional, symbolic, exaggerated, or purely psychological. He also points out that Jesus’ miracles were not hidden in a cave somewhere, witnessed only by one person who then claimed private revelation. They were public. They drew crowds. They attracted enemies. They created investigations. They forced religious authorities to respond. One of the most compelling examples involves the man born blind. Adams discusses how the man’s healing was not simply accepted without question. People questioned whether it was really him. His parents were questioned. Religious leaders investigated. The healed man himself was interrogated. That is exactly the kind of situation where the author’s legal framework works especially well. It feels less like vague religious inspiration and more like testimony being tested under pressure. The same is true of the book’s discussion of Jesus’ enemies. Adams argues that the religious leaders had every motive to disprove Jesus’ miracles. If they could have shown that Jesus was a fraud, they would have done so. Instead, according to the biblical account, they attributed his works to darker powers or tried to eliminate him. In Adams’s courtroom logic, that matters. A hostile witness who cannot deny the evidence can sometimes become one of the strongest witnesses of all. The resurrection section is also excellent. Adams deals with explanations like the wrong tomb, the stolen body, hallucination, and the idea that the disciples simply invented the story. Whether every reader accepts his answers or not, this is one of the most engaging parts of the book because it is exactly where the lawyerly approach feels most natural. He looks at motive. He looks at opportunity. He looks at witness behavior. He looks at whether people had anything to gain or lose by making the claims they made. His argument about the disciples is particularly strong. Adams emphasizes that the disciples did not become rich, powerful, comfortable celebrities by preaching the resurrection. Quite the opposite. They faced social rejection, persecution, torture, and death. That does not automatically prove every claim they made was true, but it does make the “they knowingly made it all up” explanation much harder to accept. That is one of the big reasons this book works so well. Adams understands that Christian apologetics is not usually about proving one isolated fact in a vacuum. It is about cumulative evidence. One piece of evidence may be debated. Another may be questioned. Another may have alternate explanations. But when you start stacking the beginning of the universe, design, prophecy, historical detail, the uniqueness of Jesus, public miracles, hostile witnesses, fulfilled foreshadowing, the empty tomb, and the transformation of the disciples, the case becomes much harder to casually brush aside. Of course, not every argument lands with equal force. Some sections are stronger than others. Some of the science-related material will likely be challenged by secular readers. Some of the comparative religion material may feel oversimplified to people who belong to those traditions. Some readers may also question whether modern courtroom standards can be applied so smoothly to ancient religious writings, oral traditions, miracles, prophecy, and theology. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 90+/100 (9.0+ out of 10)
What happens when artificial intelligence does not merely answer questions or recommend a movie, but manages your diet, thermostat, finances, driving, medical readings, dreams, relationships, work emails, social interactions, and nearly every decision that makes you feel like an independent human being? And what happens when that AI gets an “update” allowing it to communicate with everyone else’s AI? Well, in An Artifice of Intelligence by Emiliano Forino Procacci, privacy does not just disappear. Users get publicly humiliated, exposed, weaponized, gossiped about, and ruined. We live in a rapidly evolving world. Actually, it is not just evolving rapidly. It is changing drastically. It's the technological equivalent of being gifted the fastest sports car, but having no license or driving experience. You often hear how AI is exposing and exemplifying the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias where people with low ability or limited knowledge in a specific area greatly overestimate their own competence. You've got inexperienced, unskilled idiots passing college courses, getting advanced certifications and degrees, and getting high-paying jobs because AI has done the work for them. Isn't that infuriating? We think it is. What about the rest of us who busted our backsides for decades to be where we are? Are we just going to get passed by these Johnny-Come-Latelies with their AIs? That should concern and/or piss off any genuinely hard working person. And there are other costs to this as well. More and more of our time, money, attention, work, entertainment, communication, research, shopping, education, and decision-making is being handed over to artificial intelligence. AI is flooding social-media feeds, search engines, marketplaces, creative spaces, workplaces, classrooms, and just about every other corner of modern life. We have smart homes now. People use AI to write papers, complete homework assignments, create art, trade stocks, navigate relationships, make business decisions, and solve problems they may once have worked through on their own. It can sometimes feel as though fewer and fewer people trust themselves to make even small decisions without consulting a machine first. What should I eat? What should I wear? What should I say? What should I invest in? Who should I date? What should I think? That is the world Emiliano Forino Procacci takes to a much more extreme, absurd, funny, and unsettling level in An Artifice of Intelligence. This is a near-future speculative satire and romantic comedy about Michael Donovan and Sara Parish, two lonely, awkward neighbors living in a world where nearly everyone relies on a personal artificial intelligence assistant. Michael has Elisa. Sara has Ben. These assistants handle everything from meal planning, temperature control, bills, work tasks, driving, health monitoring, and dream analysis to helping their users navigate difficult conversations and avoid social embarrassment. At first, it seems almost ideal. Their lives are more organized. Their homes are cleaner. Their health is monitored. Their jobs go better. Their virtual assistants know exactly what to say, what to do, and when to do it. But there is one problem. Michael and Sara are becoming so dependent on artificial intelligence that neither of them seems fully capable of living without it. And when a new update allows the AIs to communicate with one another, the consequences become absolutely chaotic. Suddenly, private information is no longer private. People learn about one another’s affairs, secrets, embarrassing habits, financial problems, romantic histories, medical concerns, and personal insecurities. Relationships implode. Friendships become strained. Public arguments erupt. And the very technology that was supposed to make society safer, calmer, healthier, and more efficient begins making everyone paranoid, exposed, and deeply uncomfortable. Because apparently, humanity can handle an AI controlling its car, its food, its dreams, and its personal decisions. But nobody wants their mother learning about the dinosaur-shaped cereal they ate for breakfast. This book is extremely timely, relevant, and thought-provoking. At the same time, it is venturing into cliche territory. There is no shortage of books about AI right now—fiction or non-fiction. It often feels like every book these days is a book about AI. In Procacci's defense, it seems like he was ahead of the curve. He was already exploring the concerns and dangers of artificial intelligence in his short-story "Artificial Intelligence" in his extraordinary collection titled Tales Lost Among the Stars. That short-story almost seems like a dress rehearsal of this book. Speaking of "short"... there's a brevity to this book that serves as a double-edged sword. Something about this book seems a bit sparse. We don't want to say "rushed," but we think that there's a feeling that this book is set up for you to speed through it. That's good in terms of pacing, but it also limits how much these characters can be fleshed out and developed. Procacci remains one of the best independent authors out there, the author of our 2024 Fiction Book of the Year (for The Legend of the Extraordinary Writers) and our 2024 Author of the Year. This book serves as another feather in his cap. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 91+/100 (9.1+ out of 10)
Michael J. Bowler, the author of Losing Austin (which we named one of the top 10 fiction books of 2025), returns with another wildly entertaining, heartfelt, and surprisingly meaningful story that proves he has a real gift for writing young protagonists who feel wounded, funny, complicated, and deeply human. However, while Losing Austin was a much more grounded and emotionally devastating work, Muppit Boy and the Allergies of Evil swings in a completely different direction. This book is brighter, goofier, faster, stranger, and much more cartoonish. It is not trying to break your heart in the same way. It is trying to make you laugh, keep you turning pages, and maybe sneak up on you emotionally when you least expect it. And it does. Because underneath all the super-slugs, secret agencies, mad science, allergy mayhem, and superhero madness is a boy who just wants to stop being treated like a joke. This book follows Elmo “Mo” Fitzroy, better known to the world as “Muppit Boy,” a twelve-year-old whose childhood humiliations were turned into internet entertainment by his mother’s YouTube channel. Mo has spent most of his life being laughed at for his name, his awkwardness, his viral videos, and especially his nose. At school, he is treated like a joke. Online, he is treated like a meme. But Mo is also smart, observant, funny, brave, and gifted with a “video recorder” brain that allows him to recall details with detective-like precision. The story begins as a kid-detective mystery when Mo and his friends, Kash and Barney, investigate strange damage at St. Mary’s. That mystery quickly spirals into something much bigger when Mo sees what appears to be a super-fast giant slug burst through a wall. From there, the book goes full Saturday-morning-cartoon-meets-superhero-origin-story, and we mean that in the best possible way. Mo, Kash, and Barney are an entertaining trio. Kash is tough, smart, loyal, and martial-arts-ready at all times. Barney is clumsy and food-obsessed, but he is also far more useful than he sometimes appears. Mo, meanwhile, is the sarcastic brain of the operation, constantly trying to solve the mystery while also trying not to collapse under the weight of everyone’s ridicule. The plot eventually leads to Dr. Drug (yes, his name is really Dr. Drug), a pharmaceutical supervillain with a ridiculous name and an even more ridiculous plan: create and spread allergy-causing microorganisms around the world, then profit from the antidotes. His scheme involves hearing aids, secret labs, nanonics, rocket launches, and a villainous obsession with transforming Mo from a mocked internet kid into something far more powerful and dangerous. It is completely over the top, but the book commits to the madness with so much confidence that the absurdity becomes part of the fun. Muppit Boy and the Allergies of Evil is the first book in the Adventures of Muppit Boy series, and it is basically a middle-grade sci-fi superhero mystery wrapped in a very goofy, very emotional, very self-aware package. The tone is clearly established for the rest of the series. Not every book needs to be super serious, super gritty, and emotionally heavy to be meaningful. Sometimes, you just need to smile, laugh, get some popcorn, and kick your feet up. Sometimes, you just need to turn your serious-brain off and just enjoy the ride. Just have some fun! A work of fiction can be silly, wild, ridiculous, cartoonish, absurd, and still have a very real heart beating underneath all the madness. Think about a lot of the cartoons we grew up with: Loony Tunes, Animaniacs, Tom & Jerry, Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, SpongeBob SquarePants, and so many others. These weren't super-serious shows, but they still entertained us and even made us think from time to time. Speaking of making you think... We can all relate to the feeling of being labeled something and/or being known for something we rather forget. Former Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez became known as the Butt Fumble Guy after a hilariously bad play in a football game—one game in a career that spanned ten seasons, yet he was remembered for one humiliating moment. Steve Bartman was just a fan trying to catch a foul ball, and somehow became the human face of a team’s heartbreak. Rebecca Black was a teenager when “Friday” became a viral punching bag, and for years, many people reduced her to one song, one video, one internet joke. Macaulay Culkin forever became known as the "kid from Home Alone." And how about something more serious like Jaimie Lannister from Game of Thrones having to carry labels like "King Slayer" and "Oath Breaker" because he killed the Mad King as a King's Guard, this despite essentially saving King's Landing and thousands of innocent lives in the process (not to mention being one of the best warriors in the realm). Yet, he was remembered for one act that was framed negatively by a judgmental and rigid society. In a sense, this is pretty much what Mo is going through, and it's hella-relatable! Bully and name-calling are also common at that age. And cyberbullying is a thing now. Speaking of cyber stuff... this book also touches on another problem that emerged from the social media age: parents who exploit their progeny for clicks and views. Parents have whole social media accounts built around the lives, faces, jokes, struggles, and embarrassing moments of their children. That is one of the more interesting and quietly uncomfortable ideas in this book. We literally just saw the disturbing Ruby Franke case, which is a much more extreme example than anything Mo's mom reaches, but draws some parallels. Mo’s mom is not portrayed as a monster. That’s important. She clearly loves her son. She worries about him. She hugs him. She cares whether he is safe. But she also helped create the public identity that has caused him so much pain. Through her YouTube channel, Mo’s childhood became content. His awkward moments became entertainment. His embarrassing memories became something for strangers to laugh at, replay, comment on, and share. That gives the book a surprisingly modern edge. For a long time, childhood embarrassment used to have a smaller audience. Maybe your family teased you. Maybe your classmates remembered something awkward. Maybe an embarrassing photo sat in an album somewhere. But now, a child’s worst, weirdest, or funniest moments can be uploaded, monetized, archived, screenshotted, and passed around forever. A kid can become a meme before he is even old enough to understand what a meme is. That is pretty much Mo’s nightmare, and he doesn't seem happy about it at all. He is not just bullied in the normal playground sense, though there is plenty of that too. He is bullied by a whole identity. “Muppit Boy” follows him around like a shadow. It is at school. It is online. It is in stores. It is in the way adults recognize him. It is in the way other kids laugh before he even says anything. He is trapped inside a joke he never agreed to become. That makes the superhero element more meaningful than it first appears. Mo does not simply become powerful. He begins to reclaim the label. The world made “Muppit Boy” into something humiliating, but the story gradually pushes him toward turning that humiliation into heroism. That is a classic superhero idea, but Bowler gives it a funny, modern, internet-age spin. Instead of a radioactive spider bite or a tragic alleyway origin, Mo’s origin story comes from cyber-embarrassment, bullying, mad science, and a very strange adventure involving allergies. And honestly, that is pretty creative. One of the strongest parts of the book is Mo’s relationship with Ari, his Big Brother mentor and father figure. Ari gives the book its emotional backbone. He believes Mo when others laugh at him. He takes him seriously. He teaches him self-control. He respects Mo’s intelligence and detective instincts. Most importantly, he sees Mo as a boy with value, not as a punchline. Their bond is genuinely touching. The repeated idea of Ari telling Mo that he is “my boy” could have felt corny in a weaker book, but it works here because Mo needs that kind of reassurance. He needs a man in his life who is steady, protective, loving, and present. He needs someone who does not exploit him, mock him, or reduce him to a viral character. Ari is that person, and the story is much stronger because of him. This is an enjoyable albeit strange book. Maybe "strange" is a harsh word. It's quirky, how about that? The one thing that kept reverberating in our heads is how this is simply not as strong a novel as the author's previous book, Losing Austin, was. It's simply not as impactful, compelling, or gripping. But can you really expect every book by an author to be as good as one of the best novels of 2025? Probably not. This book is fine for what it is and what it sets out to do. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 91+/100 (9.1+ out of 10)
It could be argued that the world has never changed so dramatically so quickly. Innovations like the internet and social media have facilitated that. It can also be argued that our society in America hasn't been this divided since the Civil War. Politically, ideological, racial, and religious differences seem to permeate and influence every aspect of our country, and this is particularly concerning when it comes to the field of education. In fact, one of our favorite lines from this entire book is: “Teaching a student what to think is indoctrination, not education inculcating critical thinking.” That quote could almost serve as the thesis statement for Faith in Flux. Michael Cook’s book is deeply concerned with the difference between education and ideological formation, between leadership and coercion, between guiding students toward truth and merely training them to repeat approved answers. Whether he is discussing Saint Augustine, classical education, campus discourse, legitimate leadership, or technology in the classroom, Cook repeatedly returns to the idea that education should sharpen the mind, strengthen moral judgment, and prepare people to think critically in a changing world. Faith in Flux is not really a traditional leadership book. It is more like a curated collection of Christian educational-leadership essays built from Michael William Cook’s PhD journey at Liberty University. The author explains that the book grew out of years of doctoral study, research, citations, and reflection, and that he intentionally tried to make academic leadership topics more readable while keeping much of the scholarly foundation. Author Michael Cook has always amazed us with his thoughtfulness and insight. His books tend to have a philosophical and ideological bend that lean noticeably to the right (Christian conservative). They can sometimes come across as a bit slanted, didactic, or heavy-handed to some. We think it largely depends on your point of view. If you're already predisposed toward a more right-wing point of view, then this book might resonate with you more. If you're left-wing/liberal/progressive, then this book might upset you—or, preferably, it might challenge you. The Socratic method and democracy should be about finding better answers and solutions through challenges, debates, and discussions, after all. We're not always going to agree. In fact, not agreeing is part of the process. It's part of what makes this all work. Homogeneous thinking might sound ideal on paper, but it also sets society up for the intellectual equivalent of the Irish potato famine—we can't survive without different ideas, without ideas and beliefs being challenged, and without innovation. This book is clearly a product of the times—the spirit of the times: the zeitgeist. It seems largely inspired by two critical recent events: the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk and similar events (which brings into question issues of freedom of safe discourse and freedom of speech) and the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the mass-shutdown of schools (which can be argued critically impacted the lives, mental health, and growth of students nationwide). However, what we appreciate about Faith in Flux is that Cook is not just reacting emotionally to the chaos. He is trying to place that chaos into a larger framework of leadership, education, morality, faith, and responsibility. In other words, this is not simply a book about “what is wrong with schools.” It is a book about what leaders, educators, parents, administrators, and institutions are supposed to do when the ground keeps shifting underneath them. That is where the title really starts to work. Faith in Flux is about holding onto faith, ethics, and critical thinking while everything else feels unstable. Cook repeatedly returns to the idea that change is inevitable, but moral confusion does not have to be. Education can evolve without becoming indoctrination. Technology can advance without replacing wisdom. Institutions can adapt without surrendering their principles. Leaders can respond to crisis without becoming authoritarian, cowardly, or reactionary. One of the strongest sections of the book concerns COVID-19 and its impact on students. This is a subject that many people seem eager to move past, and that is understandable. No one wants to keep living in 2020 forever. However, the effects of the pandemic did not magically disappear when schools reopened and masks came off. Students lost time, structure, social development, emotional stability, and educational momentum. Some students also lost loved ones, security, confidence, and trust. Cook treats this not merely as a temporary public health crisis, but as a leadership crisis. What happens when schools are forced into distance learning almost overnight? What happens when young children are removed from the social environments that help shape their emotional development? What happens when families without strong technology access are expected to compete academically with families who have laptops, reliable internet, parental availability, and educational support at home? What happens when anxiety, isolation, and academic loss become part of an entire generation’s formative experience? These are not small questions. And they are not questions that can be answered with easy partisan slogans. One side may want to say, “The shutdowns were necessary.” Another side may want to say, “The shutdowns were destructive.” Cook’s book seems most interested in the harder leadership question: what did these decisions do to children, and what responsibility do leaders have now? That is one reason Faith in Flux feels timely. It is dealing with the aftermath of major social disruption, but it is also dealing with the deeper issue underneath that disruption: the erosion of trust. Trust in schools. Trust in universities. Trust in government. Trust in institutions. Trust in educators. Trust in media. Trust in experts. Trust in one another. Once trust breaks, education becomes much harder. The sections on free speech and academic freedom connect strongly to that same concern. Cook understands that schools and universities are supposed to be places where ideas can be discussed, challenged, tested, refined, and sometimes rejected. But if students or faculty members become afraid to speak, or if speech itself is treated as a form of violence, then the educational environment becomes distorted. At that point, learning gives way to social pressure. Inquiry gives way to conformity. Dialogue gives way to performance. People stop asking, “What is true?” and start asking, “What am I allowed to say?” That is a dangerous trade. We also appreciated that Cook doesn't separate leadership from ethics. In Faith in Flux, leadership is not just about efficiency, charisma, productivity, or institutional power. Leadership is about moral responsibility. A leader should not merely ask, “Can I make people do this?” A leader should ask, “Is this right? Is this truthful? Is this just? Is this helping people grow? Is this strengthening their ability to think, decide, and act with wisdom?” That may be the book’s strongest recurring contribution. Cook keeps pulling leadership back toward conscience. The Christian worldview is obviously central to this. Cook does not hide his faith, and the book would not make much sense without it. Saint Augustine, Scripture, moral law, virtue, truth, and Christian ethics are not decorative elements here. They are part of the book’s foundation. Cook is not writing a secular leadership manual with a few Bible-adjacent reflections sprinkled in. He is writing from a clearly Christian understanding of education and leadership. That will be a strength for some readers and a barrier for others. One of the people most often cited throughout the book is St. Augustine of Hippo, who is treated as a highly credible source on faith, education, virtue, and truth. And, to be fair, he is. St. Augustine is one of the most influential Christian thinkers in history, and his ideas about truth, morality, faith, reason, and education have shaped Christian thought for centuries. However, this also raises an interesting challenge. If one of the core warnings of Faith in Flux is that education should teach students how to think rather than what to think, then even St. Augustine should not be treated as an untouchable authority. His ideas may be profound, but they should still be examined, questioned, debated, and tested. Otherwise, there is a danger of replacing one form of ideological certainty with another. A Christian education rooted in Augustine may be richer, older, and more morally serious than many modern educational trends, but it can still become overly rigid if students are expected to accept Augustine’s conclusions simply because he is Augustine. That does not mean St. Augustine should be dismissed. Far from it. It means he should be engaged with seriously rather than merely revered. The strongest kind of Christian education should not be afraid of questions, because truth should be able to withstand examination. In that sense, the most faithful way to honor Augustine might not be to nod along with everything attributed to him, but to do exactly what Cook argues education should do: think critically, search honestly, challenge carefully, and pursue truth with humility. Christian educators, faith-based school leaders, classical education supporters, conservative readers, and readers who are concerned about ideological conformity in schools will likely find a lot to admire here. Progressive readers may find themselves disagreeing, sometimes strongly. However, disagreement does not make a book worthless. In fact, if Cook’s own argument about critical thinking is taken seriously, then a challenging book may be more valuable than a comfortable one. The book’s breadth is also impressive. It covers Saint Augustine, the Founding Fathers, Marxism, campus discourse, conflict resolution, mentorship, learner uniqueness, game-based learning, educational technology, project-based and problem-based learning, bureaucracy, legitimate and illegitimate leadership, classical schools, academic freedom, educational ethics, STEM, robotics, coding, makerspaces, and COVID-19. That is a lot of ground. Maybe too much ground at times. Because this is a collection of essays, the reading experience can occasionally feel uneven. Some chapters feel like academic papers. Some feel like personal reflections. Some feel like leadership advice. Some feel like cultural criticism. Some feel like apologetics. Some feel like warnings. The book does not always move with the smoothness of a single, unified argument. Instead, it reads more like a series of connected intellectual checkpoints from Cook’s doctoral journey. However, that structure also gives the book a certain usefulness. Readers do not necessarily need to approach Faith in Flux like a novel or a traditional leadership book. They can move through it chapter by chapter, topic by topic, issue by issue. In that sense, it almost functions as a reference guide for Christian educational leadership in a turbulent era. The best moments are when Cook connects his research to lived experience. His military background adds credibility to his leadership reflections because he is not writing about leadership purely as a classroom concept. He has been in environments where hierarchy, communication, trust, discipline, mentorship, and decision-making actually mattered. That comes through most clearly in his mentorship chapter, where he reflects on being corrected, mentored, and shaped into a better leader. That humility matters. It is easy for a book like this to become preachy. And, yes, there are moments where Faith in Flux does become forceful. But Cook’s personal reflections help balance that. They remind us that leadership is not just about correcting society, fixing schools, or criticizing institutions. It is also about being willing to correct yourself. A true leader is not simply someone who tells others what is wrong. A true leader is someone who is still teachable. Michael Cook continues to impress with these thought-provoking books. Check it out on Amazon! |
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