My Buy Essay

Cheryl O’Donovan and Tom Wolferman have collaborated their efforts to create a book for women of the Baby Boomer Generation with their recently released book, The Estrogen Underground. Cheryl brings her cartoonist and writer skills while Tom’s satire balances out the varied topics for today’s women that are talked about in a frank and downright funny manor.

The Estrogen Underground consistently uses light humor along with comic strip like characterizations on every page of the book. The font is a nice, readable size that occasionally mixes with the images, but not so much so that it is difficult to read.

Seven entertaining chapters banter on issues from bad wardrobe choices, changed perceptions of aging women, crazy fads, wild diets, exercise, make-up and hair escapades and plastic surgery, to more serious issues like careers verses hobbies.

Yet throughout the book the main focus seems to be of living in the moment with love and acceptance of one’s self.

Topped off with amusing and amazing quotes from famous people along with intimate, personal stories makes The Estrogen Underground a perfect gift for working or family women aged between 40 and 60.

ISBN#: 0-9767732-7-9

Author: Cheryl O’Donovan and Tom Wolferman

Publisher: A Better Be Write Publisher

Few people would expect a book about taxes to take The New York Times bestseller list by storm, but that’s exactly what The Fair Tax Book has done. For decades, Americans from every point on the political spectrum have moaned about April 15th and the maze of ridiculous instructions and high confiscatory taxation that accompanies that day. The current tax code is a labyrinth of over nine million pages of indecipherable jargon only a federal bureaucrat could fully appreciate. So is there anything we can do about this monstrosity?

You bet. The Fair Tax Book, authored by Georgia Congressman John Linder and nationally syndicated talk radio host Neal Boortz, lays out a perfect case for why the current tax code should and can be replaced by a simple and easy to understand tax system that slashes the current nine million pages of red tape in favor of a 133-page gateway to prosperity.

The concept is simple. All current federal taxes - income taxes, medicare taxes, social security taxes, gasoline taxes, capital gains taxes, etc. - will be eliminated overnight. In their place, the federal government will levy a single 23% sales tax on all retail goods. Workers will finally get to take home 100% of their paychecks. Investors will finally be able to invest without having worry about the tax consequences. And April 15th will become just another ordinary day. Sounds simple right? Well, you’ll probably have more than a few questions and concerns. But The Fair Tax Book performs a stellar job in addressing the most commonly asked questions. Questions such as the following:

If we do this, won’t prices go up 23%? No. The elimination of all current federal taxes will also eliminate the embedded tax costs inherent in all products currently sold. Since the Fair Tax will only be applied to final retail products, and not the inputs used in the manufacture of those products, prices will drop an average of 22% across the economy. So prices will remain the same!

What about the poor, won’t they get hammered by the Fair Tax? Absolutely not. In fact, the Fair Tax is the only tax reform bill before Congress that totally eliminates the tax burden of the poor. Under the Fair Tax, every American (from the richest among us to the poorest among us) will receive a monthly rebate check from the federal government that covers the cost of the 23% sales tax up the poverty level. So a check for approximately $450 will be deposited in everyone’s bank account to cover the 23% tax on the basic necessities of life (such as food, gasoline, clothing, etc.)

You’ll probably have more questions than can possibly be addressed in this short article, but I have no doubt they’ll all be answered if you simply take the time to read The Fair Tax Book. Authors Neal Boortz and John Linder brilliantly lay out their case for tax reform in an easy to read format that’s also quite entertaining. And with powerful and influential Americans such as Tom Delay, Alan Greenspan, and Sean Hannity all trumpeting their support for the Fair Tax, it seems certain to dominate the realm of political discourse in the months and years ahead.

Once you’ve read it, you’ll probably agree that The Fair Tax Book is probably the most important book to hit the American political landscape since Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The FairTax is simple and easy to understand. More importantly, it returns America to the original intent of the Founding Fathers by creating a system of voluntary taxation that unleashes the true potential of free individuals. The explosion in wealth creation certain to follow will fuel America’s position as the world’s leading superpower for decades to come and solidify our nation’s future for our children and grandchildren.

As a result, The Fair Tax Book will probably launch a political revolution. With the 2006 mid-term elections drawing near, take the time to educate yourself about the Fair Tax Act of 2005. You might well decide to become a minuteman in this modern day American tax revolt!

The Frugal Book Promoter &ndash How to do What Your Publisher Won’t is the third book written by author Carolyn Howard &ndashJohnson, but by far &ndash it is not the last. Already she is planning on releasing a book of poetry. The Frugal Book Promoter has won the USA Book News award for Best Book 2004, and has also been an Irwin Award winner.

For Dave and I, the promotion of our two books and promoting the upcoming e-book has been an uphill battle. Intensive research on our part for more than three years has prepared us for most of the work, and because of this research and hands-on experience I found very little in this book that was actually new to me. I also found it somewhat lacking in areas that could have used more attention, such as its organization.

Carolyn’s sentence structure and grammar use was confusing and frustrating at times for me to read. There was also repetitive use of information and examples, which I found a bit redundant. Personally, I would have preferred another method of organization for the book. For instance, there are many aspects of reviews, but I felt all of these should be discussed in one chapter rather than scattered throughout the book. While few links on the site were new to me, of the dozen or so that I tried one or two were no longer active. This is no fault of the author, however, and is due solely to the ever-changing Internet.

However, I was reminded of some weak areas in our marketing plan and was given some incentive for those areas I am about to broach in our schedule. I appreciated many of the links that I discovered and have had excellent responses from them.

Overall, I think The Frugal Promoter is a book that reads like you are sitting across from the author having a discussion. This is an aspect of the writing style that I certainly enjoyed. It could be considered a useful beginner’s tool that would save time by providing links, basic promotion options to choose from and several marketing ideas that are outside the norm.

ISBN#: 1-932993-10-X

Author: Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Publisher: Star Publish

Published: 2004

Pages: 288

Keith Sinteris and his wife Malena (the brains of the operation) hire three skilled accomplices (Stony, Bartolo and Duane) to kidnap three hostages from a monastery along with the holy tabernacle containing consecrated “bread”. For all her planning, Malena had no way of knowing just how awry the hostage taking could go.

Detective Jessica Harding and FBI Agent Rob Dexter are on the case. Strong willed and quick witted, Jessica puts the FBI agent in his place from the moment the two were introduced. Intrigued, Rob cannot get her out of his mind. With so few clues, the odds are stacked against the two “good guys”, yet they struggle on while the immense ransom demands continue to haunt the Catholic Church.

This is a well-told story line involving a mysterious home on an island that has a distinctive secret. The author uses scenes such as the fantastic cave hideout, the lung-busting chore of stashing loot and a magnificent storm to heighten interest.

There are several unique aspects to this suspense-filled novel over others in the adventure crime thriller genre. For one thing, the two women are the strongest characters - both leaders and quick thinkers, but on opposite sides. The Island off Stony Point certainly conveys the inherent goodness of people but also shows the great lengths that desperate and driven people will pursue. I also thought it was interesting that this is actually the second novel involving the leading hostage character, a Father Martin &ndash who was in Regis’s first novel, The Oculi Incident.

Kudos to author Regis Schilken for this excellent novel!

Author: Regis Schilken

Publisher: Bridgeway Books

ISBN#: 1-933538-13-9

Pages: 220

The Jewish Pilgrimage &ndash An Exploration of Reality, Mainly in Verse

The Jewish Pilgrimage by Geoffrey Hoffman is clearly written to inspire philosophical discussion. This book depicts the author’s personal journey to find some form of understanding about man, our various versions of God and how this effects society and the use of its knowledge. He debates moral issues and provokes deep thinking in several areas that will never leave my mind as I travel along my own road.

Geoffrey questions the justness of creation itself and the gift of consciousness. Also he cleverly uses metaphors when he depicts various pieces of himself by using the universe, planets and astrological colors. Without a doubt this student of life, takes joy in nature. Throughout the book the author makes his awe in the vastness of the universe quite apparent.

My personal favorite piece was Beautiful Among The Buildings, which used powerful visual statements like:

“Night sprawls among the broken lives that line the broken street;

The lonely and unpitied men whose waste is our defeat.

Men stagger from dank cellars; men, imprisoned in their cars,

Go roaring into sightlessness &ndash unmindful of the stars.”

And the equally powerful anti-war piece, No Frontiers:

” The father carrying the limp body of his child,

The soldier staring at his amputated hand,

The little girl among the bloodied pieces of her parents &ndash

What does it matter if they are of one side or another?

Dogma cannot grieve.

It is the pain of individuals that sears.”

I also really appreciated Half Sight, which discussed the inability to witness the good and love in life when there is so much horror to distract us from it. Today Near Watford Market was a very moving piece for me in that it was so visual. It describes an event where the author witnesses a man speaking to the public about his lack of belief in religion. And “circling like wolves, the true-believers snarled, snapping at both his arguments and him.” Yet nearby an elderly women fell, sprawling her shopping items on the ground around her. The non-believer ran over to her side and helped her on her way, “jostling to her assistance through unmoving ranks of true-believing ice”. It is a beautiful story about seeing God where you least expect it.

In the later part of the book, the author moves away from poetry and gets in to verse debating who the Jewish people are, what they are perceived as being and the persecution of this group of people through the ages. His interesting look at the holocaust does not dwell on the sorrow or loss of the people &ndash rather it centers on the people themselves.

By far, Jewish people are not the only race of people who have suffered at the hands of man and I think the author means to use the example as a tool to accelerate the intellectual growth of mankind.

ISBN#: 1-4137-7281-1

Author: Geoffrey Hoffman

Publisher: Publish America

Marshall Frank, author of six books, has proved an exceptional ability to write absorbing who-dun-it’s time and time again. According to his website he is able to do this by embellishing on real life experiences during his 30-year career investigating homicides in the Miami-Dade region of Florida. In doing so he creates a realistic, action-packed, suspenseful detective story with his recent release, The Latent &ndash a fiction novel, that I found difficult to put down.

The Latent focuses on one main character - the completely stressed out, heart-broken police investigator, Rock Burgamy. Haunted by a childhood experience and the loss of his young son, Rock battles an inclination to numb his sorrow and stress with booze. And these are not his only secrets. Twice divorced, Rock is slammed regularly with alimony and child support payments for his two other children. In order to keep up with it all, Rock must take as much overtime as possible. Unfortunately, with all of this happening at once, he delves further and further into the bottle. But he is a good man, a stubborn man who will not let a case go unsolved without giving it his all &ndash even if it means his life or sacrificing love.

A chain of gay men killings appear to have a connection and over-worked Burgamy is assigned the case. Plots thicken as the investigation deepens and poor Burgamy walks into several situations that set him up for a fall so big that he cannot get out alone.

Fantastic and intriguing insight into the underground street-sex establishments is only one of the many angles in this book. Problems within the police department from budget constraints and personal temptations to office politics is another. I am confident that The Latent will take readers inside this dark and dangerous world so smoothly that everything else fades away unnoticed.

ISBN#: 1-4137-9890-x

Author: Marshall Frank

Publisher: Publish America

Published: 2006

As a writer, I think The Letter must have been a very interesting challenge for author Roxanna Russell. This work of fiction is actually a collection of 14 short stories &ndash each revolving around some kind of letter; the Suicide Note, the Closure Letter, Love Letter, Fan Letter and so on. Yet the book is also a novel, in that each chapter is centered on a particular family and each chapter ties into the next.

The three main characters are Mark, his wife, Carol and his son Jack. Mark and Carol meet in dire circumstances, fall in love and raise children who grow into adults with lives of their own. Each major life altering moment is accentuated with an accompanying letter written by someone in the family.

The author’s humor, love and appreciation of people in her live are apparent within the first few pages of The Letter. She brings up issues so subtly that you hardly know they are there. For instance, is it wrong for Jan to sell herself to save her father? I think not. The Letter reinforces that intent is what weighing the rights and wrongs of life decisions really boils down to.

It was both a pleasure and an honor to read The Letter.

ISBN#: 1-4137-9311-8

Author: Roxanna Russell

Publisher: Publish America

I enjoyed reading this book. The characters were portrayed very well. Jack, a multimillionaire who experiences mid-life crisis and ends up finding meaning to his life &ndash but it costs him millions of dollars and emotional pain. Adele is a heavy-drinking, free-living, multimillionaire with an independent mind and a sense of humor. Wendy, a single mother who finds the love of her life. Mixed up educators playing with their students’ lives in their conquest and the retiring professor who resists this plot has a big secret. A married advisor carries on an affair with another man and when he is discovered, he thinks his world has ended.

I would say this fiction is a light comedy that is quite entertaining and has some romance elements as well. Author Robert Mercer-Nairne brings attention to common human frailties with a sense of fun. He clearly reveals the desire to ‘get rich quick’ in North American Society. Members of this society tend to hear what we WANT to hear and perceive the greener pasture out there somewhere &ndash rather than in the here and now.

Readers are shown the foolishness of following others blindly and the danger of where our greed can take us. Innocents can have their life irrevocable altered by someone else’s desire to climb a corporate or social ladder. The benefit of spiritual leaders to help ground the characters in this novel, helping them learn to forgive themselves and move on in life is used at several points in the story.

I recommend this book for anyone looking for a light, entertaining read.

ISBN#: 0974814105

Publisher: Gritpoul, Inc

Author: Robert Mercer-Nairne

It has taken me decades &ndash literally &ndash to finally pick up another C.S. Lewis book and read it. In high school I read Lewis’ book, “That Hideous Strength” and completely missed Lewis’ message. One decade later I read Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” and fully understood what Lewis was saying. With The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, part of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series, the gospel message is clearly made evident in an allegorical/mystical style. Lewis used the Narnia series to explain Christ’s love for humankind to children, who are the series’ principal readers.

This first novel in a series of seven books is currently a major motion picture now completing a successful run on theatre screens across the U.S. I have yet to see the movie, a Disney production, but I understand that it holds very true to Lewis’ storyline. I expect to see the movie before it leaves theatres later this month; it will become available on DVD this April.

Back to the story! The theme of “The Lion” centers around four children, the Pevensie siblings, who get caught up in a land of magic. Entering “Narnia” through a wardrobe [a tall cabinet that holds clothes] &ndash located in a home where they are boarding &ndash the children enter a land where it is always winter, but never Christmas. Under the spell of the White Witch, Narnia is forever in the grip of evil. The land is occupied by talking animals [beavers, for one], spirits, goblins, sprites, but no humans. That is until Lucy Pevensie shows up followed by her brother Edmund and, later, Susan and Peter.

Quite obviously the White Witch a/k/a the Queen of Narnia is most interested in humans so she resorts to all sorts of magic and trickery to lure them in. Edmund, the most impressionable of the siblings, is quickly captivated by the White Witch and then sets out to betray the others.

Without giving away the storyline, the theme of Narnia clearly reflects the captivity of this present world under Satan, but its past and future deliverance through Jesus Christ. In the form of a lion, Aslan, Lewis brings a savior to Narnia who eventually releases the land from its winter grip and vanquishes the White Witch.

For those unfamiliar with the gospel message, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe may be hard to follow. However, Lewis wrote the book in 1950 immediately after the horrors of Word War II and with the Nazi air battle for London fresh in the minds of British citizenry. Lewis may have been responding to a strong spiritual hunger of his time when he wrote the series as “Narnia” successfully points seekers to Aslan, much as the Bible points readers to Jesus Christ.

I am not sure if I will read the remaining six books in this series, but I am definitely interested in exploring several other writings of Lewis.

C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams were contemporaries who were a part of a group of writers and intellectuals known as The Inklings who met during the 1930s and 1940s at a public house in Oxford. Tolkien, like Lewis, used Christian allegory in many of his writings including, The Lord of the Rings, another series of books that was recently released as a major motion picture.

Clearly, the renewed interest in C.S. Lewis’ works is a positive step especially for a generation of children not familiar with the gospel message. Disney, for their part, is interested in developing the remaining six books of the series into individual movies. So, expect Narniamania &ndash as some have called it &ndash to continue unabated for many years to come.

This is a children’s book that will keep readers glued to the pages right to the end. The Plight of Queen Bee by Simone Fairchild entails forty pages of gorgeous, bright fun illustrations with vivid detail and glorious lilac flowers in full bloom.

Illustrator Pamela Marie Key masterfully creates real-life illusions right down to the bark on the lilac tree. I loved the bee’s wings in particular, which reminded me of a treasured sea shell from my childhood that had pearl-like iridescent quality to it.

Multiple award winning author Simone Fairchild spins a fascinating detective story, complete with a Sherloch Holmes-like character &ndash Detective Brown who is called in to solve the baffling mystery of who is stealing Queen Bee’s nectar. Detective Brown must endure awful pressure from Queen Bee and find out who is telling the truth. He accidentally discovers a culprit red-handed that completely surprises readers and heroically disarms the robber with swift swordplay. Simone Fairchild certainly reveals her talent for this genre and a love for her readers, which flows throughout this excellent book.

Four wonderful games will stimulate the minds of your children while the images and details will keep them amused for long periods of time. It’s a sure bet that The Plight of Queen Bee will be read many, many times by your family.

ISBN#: 0976773236

Author: Simone Fairchild

Illustrations: Pamela Marie Key

Publisher: A Better Be Write Publisher