Non-Fiction | Self-Publishing Review

Review: Human Behavior in Extreme Situations by Robert H. Koff & Kathryn Hanna

★★★½

Human Behavior in Extreme Situations by Robert H. Koff and Kathryn R. Hanna is a book that unfortunately needed to be written, given that school shootings have become the “new normal.” Investigating a number of tragic events throughout history, Koff and Hanna examine what we can learn from them in order to be better prepared when a similar events happen in the future.

Koff and Hanna make clear at the outset that this book isn’t about preventative methods. They don’t delve into the gun control/mental health debate. They reference the head of the NRA saying “We need to be […]

Henry Baum2019-01-22T15:21:54+02:00February 25th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Education, Non-Fiction, Social Science|

Review: Happy Chasing Happy by Jerome Jay Isip

★★★★½

A vicious piece of prose – unique and powerful.

At the outset of this brutal and honestly painful story, the name of this book may seem misleading, to say the least. But the further along into the novel you dig, the title begins to make more sense. From the darkest depths of drug addiction, self-loathing, and listless living to the incredible heights of physical perfection, mental clarity, and self-fulfillment, this book is a true knockout, written with the patience and precision one would expect from a veteran novelist.

The intricacies of the professional MMA world may be a mystery […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2016-03-10T09:59:40+02:00February 25th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Memoir, Non-Fiction|

Review: Accidental Dad by Joshua McDowell

★★★★½

A deeply personal and thorough perspective on life as a single father.

Every established system has its persistent flaws, regardless of how often or eagerly they’re pointed out. In Accidental Dad, Joshua McDowell presents his case against the treatment of single fathers in a tangled system seemingly designed to make them fail. McDowell takes readers through his story from start to finish, where he successfully joined the small percentage (6-11%) of single fathers who fought for custody and actually won. He offers this unique perspective in an unadulterated form, revealing his intimate details of teenage fatherhood, the pain of […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2016-03-10T09:59:20+02:00February 25th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Memoir, Non-Fiction, Parenting|

Review: Reach: Cultivate Customer Loyalty and Reap Intel by Ellen Wunder

★★★★½

Ellen Wunder is a customer outreach specialist who knows how to connect with clients and make and keep them happy. She shares this knowledge with readers in this informative and very readable book.

Part business guide, part psychology manual, Reach will teach management and sales and customer service teams lots of things they probably didn’t know they needed to know. It is filled with advice and insight for anyone who is interested in doing a better job of understanding and getting along with the people they deal with everyday, not just customers. If taken seriously, this book will help […]

Cate Baum2016-03-06T03:29:42+02:00February 21st, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Business, Non-Fiction|

Review: American Stew: Hope in a Toxic Culture by Stephen James

American Stew by Stephen James is a portrait of America that’s at once hopeless and full of promise. Chapter by chapter James attempts to diagnose America’s problems on a cultural level – sociological, psychological, and anthropological – rather than dealing with policy. The picture he paints is not a pretty one. Though America is oftentimes called “The best country in the world,” this is something of a misnomer, given where America ranks in satisfaction on a number of different fronts. It’s not so much a pessimistic outlook, as realistic, revealing a number of hard truths about what is and isn’t […]

Henry Baum2019-02-11T09:38:15+02:00February 9th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Non-Fiction, Politics|

Teachings on Being by Codrin Stefan Tapu

Teachings on Being: The Holy Book of Religious Leaders, Followers, and Non-Believers by Codrin Stefan Tapu is a collection of aphorisms about what Tapu calls “The New Faith.”

The New Faith accepts all faiths under one umbrella as a sort of syncretism, while promoting union between different religions and heritages. As an outcropping of this ethos, Teachings on Being collects together a number of different chapters, each a few paragraphs long about how humans can be united and live together peacefully.

Though there are profound ideas woven into the book, it follows in the footsteps of Jodorowsky or Chopra in […]

Henry Baum2018-05-09T10:21:44+02:00February 3rd, 2016|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Non-Fiction, Self-Help, Spirituality|

Review: The Evangelical Experience by Anthony Coleman ★★★★★

The Evangelical Experience is a book with two agendas. One is easily identified. The other is harder to discern, perhaps even for the author himself.

The more obvious of the two purposes behind this book is the intent to provide insight for non-Evangelical Christians into the traditions, customs, beliefs, ethics, leadership, and practices of the Christian movement. This goal is accomplished with astonishing thoroughness considering the brief length of the overall manuscript. Coleman begins by first defining “Evangelical Christians” in today’s world, and then continues to outline the core beliefs concerning the faith’s fundamental tenets, such as the divinity of […]

Dakota Kemp2016-02-15T06:17:47+02:00February 3rd, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Non-Fiction, Religion|

Choosing Differently: A Memoir of a Software Entrepreneur’s Wife by J.S. Joseph

Choosing Differently: A Memoir of a Software Entrepreneur’s Wife is the candid story of a divorce. It’s also a story of an internet startup, which ultimately failed, so the story is about heartache and poor decisions on two fronts. Choosing Differently is at once sober and heartfelt, as Joseph tackles the problems in her life with a deepening sense of self-respect and adventure, while giving an interesting front-row seat to the competitive, and oft-times disappointing, world of software development.