Essays | Self-Publishing Review

Deep Heavy Stuff by Don Ake

An insightful collection of personal essays and thought-provoking anecdotes, Deep Heavy Stuff: Thoughts and essays for enriching your life by Don Ake is an inspiring work of contemporary writing that is alternately raw, funny, and hopeful.

Addressing some of the deep spiritual and social wounds of the modern age, this collection is in turn a pandemic journal, a revelatory memoir, and a call to action, detailing relatable traumas and struggles so many people have faced in the past few years. Ake shares his thoughts on everything from Christmas traditions and quiet miracles to corporate loyalty and the curse of not […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2024-02-14T13:43:52+02:00February 14th, 2024|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Essays, Self-Help|

Review: The Push Back by Lawrence Clayton

Boldly addressing hot-button issues that have long divided America, The Push Back by Lawrence Clayton offers a clarion call for the rejection of recent shifts in political, social, biological, and ethical thought. A starkly partisan collection of contemporary essays, this grouping of unabashed op-eds tackles everything from critical race theory and liberal media bias to white fragility, affirmative action, and cancel culture.

While claiming the title of academic and historian might suggest an impartiality in the reporting of facts, the author’s biases are immediate, relentless, and fully embraced. Not only does this text attempt to rewrite, whitewash, reframe, or eradicate […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2023-03-20T17:18:55+02:00February 7th, 2023|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Essays, Politics|

Matters of Death by Norman Weeks

With the grace, curiosity, and relentless eye for detail displayed in the first half of this series, author Norman Weeks explores the shadow side of life in his latest book, Matters of Death.

Sifting through the sands of history and culture to explore the taboos and traditions surrounding death and the hereafter, these interconnected essays form a narrative arc of his own discovery. From the moralism of Judaic death rituals and the Christian theology of predestination to the ethics of Dr. Death, these essays are a kaleidoscopic review of death as a philosophy, practice, and aspiration of humanity.

The […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2022-03-21T09:19:46+02:00March 18th, 2022|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Essays, Norman Weeks, Social Science|

Matters of Life… by Norman Weeks

A thought-provoking collection of well-crafted essays exploring the dynamic and intimate philosophy of existence, Matters of Life… by Norman Weeks is a wise and gentle manifesto.

Broken into three distinct sections – “Life Thought About,” “Laughed At,” and “Suffered” – the prose feels all encompassing, from our biological origins and anthropological myths to our emotional maturation as individuals and a species. Weeks examines humanity as a naturalist, a philosopher, an investigator, and even a harsh critic, depending on the subject and tack of each essay, covering issues such as powerful personal experiences that shape our paths, unpredictable bumps in the […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2022-03-18T05:14:19+02:00January 20th, 2022|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Essays, Norman Weeks, Social Science|

Review: Behind Enemy Lines by Ray Keating

The journalistic side of Ray Keating’s writing comes to the fore in Behind Enemy Lines: Conservative Communiques from Left Wing New York. Boasting a traditional conservative voice that is measured, self-aware, confident, and persuasive, Keating’s arguments are original and thought-provoking, while many of the ideas explored in this book are surprisingly nuanced.

As a journalist, fiction writer, and general observer of life, Keating has written more than 8,000 columns and pieces over the past thirty years, remaining steadily in the lane of idyllic conservatism – family, God, and country matter above most else. Having read many of Keating’s Pastor Grant […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2020-06-30T05:54:30+02:00June 6th, 2020|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Essays, Politics, Ray Keating|

Searching for My Heart: Essays About Love by Dawn Downey

Searching for My Heart: Essays About Love by Dawn Downey is filled with beautiful and personal stories of the different types of love one can encounter in the world, as well as the fight with one’s self to find that place we can call “home.” Following the author on her journey from adolescence to adulthood feels in a way like reading her diary, an intensely personal and honest examination of one person’s journey through life.

Downey’s focus is not necessarily on romantic love, but on the larger concept of love for all things, especially oneself. This is not a book […]

SPR2019-01-11T14:50:22+02:00October 14th, 2018|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Essays, Self-Help|

Review: Sex and God and Other Essays by William J. Cataldi

Sex and God and Other Essays is a curious collection of writing that sticks long after closing the book. Some of the subjects are so outrageous and so taboo, that at times it’s hard to believe they have been written. But thankfully, Cataldi has, given the instant impression of a brave author.

Considering the background of the writer, which he explains in the prologue in detail, the work is shaded with a whole other quality. A gay-Christian-Taoist-Leatherman who doesn’t agree with vegetarians? That’s about as niche a viewpoint you’ll ever get.

Never once does it feel thoughts are disingenuous, and […]

SPR2019-01-22T11:37:17+02:00July 14th, 2018|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Essays, LGBTQI|

Athena’s Owl by Robert Woolston

From Napoleon to Thoreau to Edward Snowden to Hollywood, Robert Woolston’s essay collection, Athena’s Owl: Philosophy Articles on Personal Growth, Modern Society & Hollywood Cinema, provides an intelligent and well-observed study of humanist philosophies in their earliest forms, and their transposition into modern culture.

Each of these short essays covers some aspect of morality as originally conceived, and as later enacted in film or current world affairs. The three main sections demonstrate how the ethics of such systems as Stoicism, Pragmatism, and Transcendentalism can impinge on our lives and permeate even the realm of entertainment.

The harsh upbringing and […]

Barbara Scott2017-09-21T04:28:11+02:00September 19th, 2017|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Essays, Philosophy|