Category: Books

Laurie Lawlor (BSJ74)

Restoring Prairie, Pond, and Woods: How a Small Trail Can Make a Big Difference is full color nonfiction for readers age 10 and up to be released in April by Holiday House, NY. This is the remarkable story about the cooperative effort in a small southeastern Wisconsin community to clean up an eight-acre abandoned lot. With only a bare-bones budget, a group of volunteers–everyone from local firemen and high school students, to local business owners and Boy Scouts–came together to pitch in to clear invasives, grade the trail, and plant native prairie, woodland, and wetland species. The trail leads through what’s become an outdoor classroom and valued community resource for all ages. In a starred review, Kirkus calls the book: “More than a simple account of a wilderness restoration project. This is activism at its most accessible: the beautiful struggles of a region and community to make a large difference in a small world. A magical and timely story of ecosystems restored to their former glory.” (January 2023)

Robert Drews (BSJ71, MSJ72)

J.J. Werth has lived for his work, allowing career to replace the need for a family or outside interests. So when his company decides to lay him off in favor of someone younger and cheaper, 61-year-old J.J. is at a crossroad. After indulging in a healthy dose of self-pity, he decides to look for answers. Through bonding with Father Thomas, a former Marine and very unlikely priest, J.J. embarks on a journey to find his place in the world and winds up finding so much more.

Ian Douglass (MSJ06)

Before Steve Keirn became one of the most influential trainers in professional wrestling history, he had a one-of-a-kind wrestling career that stretched around the pro wrestling world.

In “The Keirn Chronicles Volume One: The Fabulous Wrestling Life of Steve Keirn,” Douglass helps Steve Keirn tell the story of a young man who appeared to have lost his father to war at a delicate age, and whose subsequent quest to find a suitable father figure led him into a lifelong career in the professional wrestling industry. Keirn became one of the signature faces of Florida wrestling before evolving into one of wrestling’s most irrefutable trendsetters during his time as one half of the pioneering Mid-American tag team known as The Fabulous Ones!

Douglass and Keirn withhold no details with respect to everything from Keirn’s tumultuous childhood to each hair-raising incident that transpired during the first 20 years of his wrestling career. Over the course of more than 400 pages, Douglass helps Keirn elaborate on all of the latter’s interactions and relationships with dozens of legendary professional wrestling figures, including Eddie Graham, Mike Graham, Jack Brisco, Gerald Brisco, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant and Dusty Rhodes.

This is the backstory behind one of the most unheralded influencers in professional wrestling history!

Michael Chacko Daniels (MSJ68)

In his foreword to the book, Deepak Dalal writes:

“Although Michael Chacko Daniels has lived and written for over five decades in the US, presently in San Francisco – a city at the cutting edge of technology – this little fable shows that his heart still lingers in his beloved India, where he grew up.

The story starts off about a change to vegetarianism and how a member of the Indian Christian community, who loves meat and everything non-vegetarian, must bid farewell to his meat-eating days. But the inner story within the outer story develops into what reads like an Indian folktale. The central characters – the crows, the parrot and sunbird, the people and their offerings made to inanimate deities, and the transcendent transfiguration at the end – evoke the very essence of India.

Adrija Ghosh’s illustrations are of a uniformly high quality, the most appealing of which are her depictions of crows, evocatively conveying the bird’s cunning and resourcefulness. Her work is a perfect accompaniment complementing Daniels’s narrative.”

Jeffrey Cousins (BSJ85)

In this Sci-Fi adventure, a captured alien reveals that the aliens created humans. Humans are just robots. The human race has different reactions to the news.

What happens to our values?

Should human laws remain?

Should we still have compassion for each other?

Does killing a human being still have the same meaning?

What do you think?

Ian Douglass (MSJ06)

Spanning 60 years and covering professional wrestling events that took place on both land and sea, this book by Ian Douglass includes original input and interviews from nearly 50 wrestlers, writers, and other noteworthy individuals who played meaningful roles in the progression of the professional wrestling history of the Bahamas.

Not only was Douglass able to include insights from a broad range of wrestlers, including Dory Funk Jr., Jimmy Garvin, Mike Rotunda, Don Muraco, Tyree Pride, Kevin Sullivan, Steve Keirn, Brian Knobbs, Omar Amir and Adam Page, but Bahamian Rhapsody was also completed with the full cooperation of the leading Bahamian newspapers – The Nassau Guardian and The Nassau Tribune.

In addition to broadly covering the professional wrestling events that were held in the Bahamas by territories associated with the National Wrestling Alliance, the book also includes coverage of the development of the independent Bahamian wrestling companies of the 1970s, and events hosted by smaller independent organizations based in the United States and Canada. Furthermore, it explores the challenges of training and developing native-born Bahamian professional wrestlers, from local 1970s wrestling stars like “The Sensational Bahamian Grappler” Arnsel Johnson to multi-time Ohio Valley Wrestling Heavyweight Champion Omar Amir.

Douglass previously co-authored the autobiographies of wrestlers Dan Severn, Buggsy McGraw, Dylan “Hornswoggle” Postl and Brian Blair. He has also written for Men’s Health Magazine, MEL Magazine and Splice Today, and has been a contributor to both the International Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and the Bahamas Historical Society.

S.L. (Sandi) Wisenberg (BSJ79)

Even as a fourth-generation Jewish Texan, S.L. Wisenberg has always felt the ghost of Europe dogging her steps, making her feel uneasy in her body and the world. As a child she imagines Nazis taking her family away, fearing that her asthma would make her unlikely to survive. In her late twenties, she infiltrates sorority rush at her alma mater, curious about whether she’ll get a bid now. Later in life, she makes her first and only trip to the mikvah after a breast biopsy (benign, this time), prompting an exploration of misogyny, shame, and woman-fear in rabbinical tradition.

With wit, verve, blood, scars, and a solid dose of self-deprecation, Wisenberg wanders across the expanse of continents and combs through history books and family records in her search for home and meaning. Her travels take her from Selma, Alabama, where her East European Jewish ancestors once settled; to Vienna, where she tours Freud’s home and figures out what women really want; and she visits Auschwitz, which disappointingly leaves no emotional mark. Finally, after reflecting on hospitality and the mutually assured destruction pact of Airbnb, she settles on a tentative definition of home.

“A sharp, deeply questioning mind and a wayward heart inform these delicious essays. They are wry, humorous, melancholy, and universally relatable, filled with the shock of recognition.” –Phillip Lopate

Bob Reiss (BSJ73)

Bob’s 24th book, “Still Hungry, Tales From the Shadows” is a short story collection with 8 tales reflecting a lifelong love with the old Twilight Zone TV series, and the art of showing truths about the real world by getting at them through the back of the mirror. A waitress faced with an unusual customer. A scientist summoned to a military base. A world leader trapped at 30,000 feet. A PR person dealing with a pesky journalist. A teenager’s journey during the last 8 hours before the US splits into two countries. Choices and consequences, highlighted in the shadow world.

Jay Copp (MSJ89) You may not be Catholic, but good luck getting through a day without experiencing the impact of Catholicism. Woken up by an alarm and glanced at the clock? The mechanical clock was invented in the 10th century by a monk who became pope. Cornflakes for breakfast? The milk is safe thanks to Louis Pasteur, a devout Catholic whose research was driven by a love of God and humanity.

Relaxing with a beer or glass of wine once you get home? Monks in the Middle Ages, sequestered in their monasteries and needing to fend for themselves, were the first brew masters and also significantly advanced the art of winemaking.

Curling up with a good book by a literary giant? Rough-and-tumble Papa Hemingway was a disillusioned member of the Lost Generation, but as a Catholic he also searched for God as diligently as he hunted big game in Africa.

Perhaps you have a good job because you went to college. The university was a Catholic innovation. Stopping at the hospital after work to visit a sick parent? The Greeks and Romans had some admirable civic virtues, but caring for the ill was not one of them. Early Christians began the first hospitals.

Our customs, pastimes and enduring practices and institutions often can be traced back to an inventive, resourceful and, usually, a devout Catholic.