BookSpeak Network

The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Destruction (The New Press, Jan 2019)

After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis―from Alaska to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest―in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice.

In The End of Ice, we follow Jamail as he scales Denali, the highest peak in North America, dives in the warm crystal waters of the Pacific only to find ghostly coral reefs, and explores the tundra of St. Paul Island where he meets the last subsistence seal hunters of the Bering Sea and witnesses its melting glaciers. Accompanied by climate scientists and people whose families have fished, farmed, and lived in the areas he visits for centuries, Jamail begins to accept the fact that Earth, most likely, is in a hospice situation.

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Van Carter is a retired broadcast journalist. "I was never a war correspondent, yet we're now in a war and I feel like I'm reporting from the front lines."  He published the green website theOnlyGreenlist from 2008-2023.  For more of the 12 episodes, search Suicide Earth at BlogTalk Radio.

Music credit: David Nevue, While the Trees Sleep

Kudos to Sunbury Press for hosting this interview series on its BookSpeak Network

Lawrence Knorr and the members of BANG, a hard rock trio from South Philadelphia, recounted the band's meteoric rise to fame during the early 1970s in their book The BANG Story: From the Basement to the Bright Lights. In this episode, host Lawrence Knorr delves into the business side of drummer Tony Diorio, who is a natural entrepreneur. Tony's family owned several five and dime retail outlets in the Philadelphia area as Tony was growing up. This provided him with a career path before he got interested in music. Tony then led BANG on a mercurial ride to Florida and fame as Columbia recording artists. Following the flame-out of the band, Tony pursued other opportunities, starting a very different business from anything he had done before.

Sunbury Press miraculously brought together the daughters of Valentyn Koval and Julian Wojtowych by publishing Oxana Koval Lapchuk’s, book, “The Journalist, A Holocaust Story.” Tanya Wojtowych, daughter of Julian, found the book and then its author on the internet and realized that the man named “Stefan” on page 66 was her father. Both women were filled with gratitude to discover they were not alone in the lifelong quest to understand and preserve the intricate, complex, and little-known journeys of their fathers.

Join their conversation as they discuss their research into their fathers' combined paths during WWII and how those paths diverged.

In The 100% Solution: A Plan for Solving Climate Change (Melville House, Mar 2020), Solomon Goldstein-Rose, a leading millennial climate activist, makes clear what needs to happen to hit the 2050 target: the manufacturing booms we must spur, the moonshot projects we must fund, the amount of CO2 we’ll have to sequester from the atmosphere, and much more.

Written because the author couldn’t find a comprehensive analysis that actually added up to a full solution, this fully-illustrated and accessible book takes readers through high-level logic about what approaches can solve climate change, and presents a brief analysis of physical options for clean equipment and the role various governments, companies, and activists can play.

This book arms activists with specific demands, sets the stakes for what our leaders must achieve, and proves that with comprehensive thinking we can still take back our future.

Solomon Goldstein-Rose was elected to the Massachusetts legislature on a climate change-focused platform at age 22.

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Van Carter is a retired broadcast journalist. "I was never a war correspondent, yet we're now in a war and I feel like I'm reporting from the front lines." He published the green website theOnlyGreenlist from 2008-2023.  For more of the 12 episodes, search Suicide Earth at BlogTalk Radio.

Music Credit: David Nevue: While the Trees Sleep

Kudos to Sunbury Press for hosting this interview series on its BookSpeak Network

On this episode of Milford House Mysteries, Joan and Sherry interview author Children and Young Adult book author Joe Harvey. Harvey’s books focus on the lives, concerns and frustrations of pre-teens and teens.  We'll talk about Harvey's latest elementary-school age volume, If We’re Really Quiet , It Won’tFind Us that features a creature called The Howler rumored to be roaming the woods near Camp Calamity. Harvey will also talk about his newest Young Adult novel, Summer Changes Everything, a coming-of-age novel that explores the struggles that many teens face such as addiction, family crisis, and identity. We'll also hear from Harvey on how his teaching background helps him understand his young reading audience.

Milford House Mysteries Hosts - Sherry Knowlton is the author of the Alexa Williams series of murder mysteries including Dead of Autumn, Dead of Summer, Dead of Spring, Dead of Winter. and Dead on the Delta. Joan West is the author of the Carlisle Crime Cases series including Dying for Vengeance, Courting Doubt and Darkness, Darkness at First Light, Had a Dying Fall and Things Strangled. West has just released her first historical work, Madame Bessie Jones: Her Life and Times.

Lou Gehrig Day is on June 2. This annual, league-wide celebration will be a time to not only honor the legacy of this Hall of Fame first baseman but to also raise awareness and funds to fight ALS.  

Dan Joseph is a Washington-based journalist, editor and writer, and a senior editor in the Voice of America's central newsroom. He is the author of "Last Ride of the Iron Horse," the first book to examine Lou Gehrig's 1938 season, Gehrig's last full year in the Yankee lineup as he began to battle symptoms of the fatal disease ALS. Dan is also a baseball historian and discovered the audio clip of Gehrig saying that yes, Babe Ruth DID hit a "called shot" home run in the 1932 World Series. Dan has run the Africa desk in the VOA newsroom for more than 15 years, and he previously co-authored (with Harun Maruf) "Inside Al-Shabaab: The Secret History of Al-Qaeda's Most Powerful Ally," a study of the Somalia-based Islamist militant group.

Another example of serious fiction trying to fight ignorance.

The Heatstroke Line (Sunbury Press, 2015) depicts a United State with its coastal cities flooded and its remaining land sweltering under debilitating heat.  It has broken into smaller units that are in conflict with each other and it's dominated by more northerly nations, like Canada, that now have temperate climates. It shows an imaginable future, not very distant from the present when there are still modern houses, cars, governments, schools and political conflicts. The purpose is to bring home to Americans the devastating effects that climate change might have on our nation.

Ed Rubin is a law professor.  He's never written a book like this. "I wrote The Heatstroke Line as a warning. It emerged from my sense of frustration and dismay about the refusal of so many people, and so many political leaders to confront the reality of human-induced climate change."

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Van Carter is a retired broadcast journalist. "I was never a war correspondent, yet we're now in a war and I feel like I'm reporting from the front lines."  He published the green website theOnlyGreenlist from 2008-2023.  For more of the 12 episodes, search Suicide Earth at BlogTalk Radio.

Music credit: David Nevue, While the Trees Sleep

Kudos to Sunbury Press for hosting this interview series on its BookSpeak Network

On this episode, Sherry Knowlton and J.M West interview Laury Egan, a versatile and prolific writer, back for a second visit to Milford House Mysteries to talk about her new work of literary fiction, The Swimmer. Reviewer Lori Ostlund describes “The Swimmer in this words: "a psychotherapist with end-stage cancer contemplates the end of her life and marriage and her failures as a mother, while saving the life of a beautiful swimmer grieving over the death of his husband. Egan’s story is for anyone contemplating the meaning of death, life, and everything in between: fear, regret, desire, hope, acceptance. A novel written with deep compassion and beautiful storytelling.”

Milford House Mysteries Hosts - Sherry Knowlton is the author of the Alexa Williams series of murder mysteries including Dead of Autumn, Dead of Summer, Dead of Spring,, Dead of Winter. and Dead on the Delta Joan West is the author of the Carlisle Crime Cases series including Dying for Vengeance, Courting Doubt and Darkness, Darkness at First Light, Had a Dying Fall and Things Strangled. West has just released her first historical work, Madame Bessie Jones: Her Life and Times.

(Fiction novels, too, play an important role in garnering public attention of the Climate Crisis)

The Weathermaker (Milford House Press, Jan 2020) is a “cli-fi” genre-bending thriller, with the action aspects of Twister. It shows the tragic aspects of climate change (like The Day After Tomorrow) and “the cure is worse than the disease” (Snowpiercer). There is also evidence that controlling nature can lead to disaster (Jurassic Park). The added bonus is that the author is a meteorologist, and the science is accurate. Plus, 40 years on TV has given him lots of “inside TV news” stories.

Glenn (Hurricane) Schwartz was the first “storm chaser” for the Weather Channel in 1985. He received his nickname, “Hurricane,” after a colleague saw footage of him being blown around in a storm. The nickname stuck. He graduated from Penn State in 1972 with a Bachelor of Science in Meteorology. On his first day of work, he covered Hurricane Andrew from Fort Myers, Florida. He lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with his wife, Sherry, and is a lifelong Philadelphia sports fanatic.

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Van Carter is a retired broadcast journalist. “I’ve never been a genre reporter until now, but the Climate Crisis deserves everyone’s full attention.”  He published the green website theOnlyGreenlist from 2008-2023.  For more of the 12 episodes, search Suicide Earth at BlogTalk Radio.

Music Credit: David Nevue, While the Trees Sleep

Kudos to Sunbury Press for hosting this interview series on its BookSpeak Network

Charles Miller is a thirteen-year-old who is looking forward to a lazy Florida summer with his friends. That all changes when a strange-looking raft rolls up, led by a certain "Captain Kid."

The captain enlists Charles and the gang to aid him in a mission to rescue a princess known as the Patch Fairy. What follows is a wild ride through space, bringing them in contact with mysterious and dangerous characters, gangs, and out-of-this-world beings.

The Reality Deck is anything but, or so it seems, as Charles and his friends join the captain and go "Into the Attic of the World."

Author Joseph Mazerac grew up with a father in the US Army. His first job was as an Unexploded Ordnance Technician, but he also pursued drawing and illustration before turning to writing. He has won the Royal Palm Literary Award, hosted his own podcast and continues to love travel. He lives with his family in Jacksonville, Florida.