Blogishness, Just Another Meat Eating Dirtbag

Publisher’s Weekly Review of: Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag: A Memoir

We just got in our first trade publication review for Meat-Eating Dirtbag and it’s from Publisher’s Weekly!

Graphic Memoir Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag
Click to purchase!

Publisher’s Weekly is one of the premier book reviewers and they get sent thousands of books for possible review–not all of them get a review–so it’s an honor that they’ve taken the take to read and review my newest book. Here’s my favorite highlight from the review:

“Anthony’s cocky, chatty voice is complemented by Simone’s vibrantly colored drawings and keen eye for gesture and character detail. Whether or not this missive changes minds about meat-eating, it’s a winning argument for empathy, concluding that love can sometimes be the absolute best, too.”

Publisher’s Weekly

 

 

BookTube

Collected BookTube Reviews of: Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir

BookTubers “BookaFlixTaylor,” “Roya Eve Reads,” and “Book Roast,” all share their reviews of the award-winning post-war memoir: Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir.



Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir

dark humored military memoir“An intense memoir.” -Kirkus

“A must read.” -Colby Buzzell

“Anthony delivers a dose of reality that can awaken the mind…” Bookreporter

Order your copy of Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir .

BookTube

BookTube Review: Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir

BookTuber “BookaFlixTaylor” – Reviews Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir.

Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir

dark humored military memoir“An intense memoir.” -Kirkus

“A must read.” -Colby Buzzell

“Anthony delivers a dose of reality that can awaken the mind…” Bookreporter

Order your copy of Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir .

Uncategorized

School Library Journal Review of Veteran’s PTSD Memoir

A recent review from the School Library Journal regarding Civilianized:

“Teens who have grown up witnessing America’s involvement in wars and who may know veterans who experienced warfare firsthand will be drawn to this raw, unsentimental memoir. Upon returning home, Anthony-who spent the previous year in Iraq assisting doctors during surgery in a combat support hospital-realizes that he misses the adrenaline rushes, sense of purpose, and camaraderie. Thinking about misguided politics invokes a rage in the 21-year-old that is channeled by putting himself in dangerous situations. But far worse is the feeling of numbness. Alcohol and drug abuse lead to suicidal thoughts and the resolution that if he doesn’t recover in three months, he will kill himself. Believing that he has nothing to lose, Anthony signs up for a course on learning how to attract women. The narration has moments of levity as the instructor, whom Anthony describes as an “ape with ADD,” guides a group of misfits in ridiculous exercises. Anthony has ups and downs as he copes with post-traumatic stress disorder and addictions during the allotted three months. Ultimately, his salvation comes through writing about the truths of his deployment as well as through sobriety and a romantic relationship. The author’s message (that it’s not necessarily the horrors of war that break a soldier- it’s coming home) will resonate with audiences of all ages. VERDICT This fast, immersive work will especially appeal to reluctant readers for its grittiness and humor.”

-Sherry Mills, Hazelwood East High School, St. Louis

Book Notes

Book Review: Jesus and the Disinherited, by Howard Thurman

Howard Thurman Jesus and the Disinherited

To introduce the subject of this book and the need for it, Thurman observes, “Many and varied are the interpretations dealing with the teachings and the life of Jesus of Nazareth. But few of these interpretations deal with what the teachings and the life of Jesus have to say to those who stand, at a moment in human history, with their back against the wall. To those who need profound succor and strength to enable them to live in the present with dignity and creativity, Christianity often has been sterile and of little avail.”

Thurman (1899-1981) sets the stage for the universality of his argument by quoting a basic and unavoidable tenet.

“To some God and Jesus may appeal in a way other than to us: some may come to faith in God and to love, without a conscious attachment to Jesus. Both Nature and good men besides Jesus may lead us to God. They who seek God with all their hearts must, however, some day on their way meet Jesus.” -Heinrich Weinel and Alban G. Widgery, Jesus in the Nineteenth Century and After

Both an academic and an ordained minister, friend of Martin Luther King, Sr., Thurman worked out these issues with other leading men and women of his era.

“His [Jesus’s] message focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of the people. He recognized fully that out of the heart are the issues of life and that no external force, however great and overwhelming, can at long last destroy a people if it does not first win the victory of the spirit against them.”

“The masses of men live with their backs constantly against the wall. They are the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed.”

To the existence of these injustices, Thurman offers Jesus as the answer to salvation first, which takes care of one’s eternal life, and only afterwards may the question of earthly injustice be addressed.

“This is the position of the disinherited in every age. What must be the attitude toward the rulers, the controllers of political, social, and economic life? This is the question of the Negro in American life.”

This was also Jesus’s status, as a Jew, a minority living in a dominated by the Romans. His people kept under the thumb of a ruling majority, Jesus lived under racism and segregation as a way of life.

“He [Jesus] recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny. If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection. It is a man’s reaction to things that determines their ability to exercise power over him.”

“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which us able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” -Matthew 10:28

Making the conscious choice to put people in their proper place, rejecting fear of those who can’t hurt your eternal condition, allows an unbiased appraisal of others, especially your antagonists. This perspective protects the bearer from inaccurate or exaggerated estimations of another person’s significance or influence.

Become aware of your status in God’s kingdom, and the status of all his other children, whether they know him or not. Within this framework, you can begin to see life with, what Thurman calls, an “almighty clarity.”

Howard Thurman’s short, 112 page treatise asks of each man, “How did he relate himself to the central issues of his time?” This book is Thurman’s answer for himself.  The central issue in Thurman’s day to day life was the inequality and segregation of black and white people in post-World War 2 America. In a religion buttressed by the equality of all men under God, the great Christian nation had failed to find that equality. Thurman insightfully, if at times pedantically, presents Jesus as the model, in both practice and theory, for oppressed people of all times and places.

Picture: Flickr/TCDavis